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Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'
An anonymous reader writes "Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""
Let me get the ball rolling here...
All the Gnome users I've ever known fall into one of three distinct classifictions:
Discuss.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
..."Use Windows."
This way to the egress...
If Torvalds posted that here, he'd be at -1, Troll in under ten seconds. Unless, of course, he signed it with his own name, at which point it would be at +5, Ass Kiss.
I must be number 3... and I do all of my work from the shell anyway. :)
Get E!
As a former contributor and developer on the GNOME architecture for many years I can say that GNOME is in no way ready to serve as the corporate desktop. There are simply to many issues inside and around the entire GNOME movement that should be mentioned here.
First of all GNOME has a very broken development framework with a lot of fragmentation. A lot of libraries are not working properly enough even in stable releases to give users a full working desktop environment. A lot of stuff are simply not working properly and a lot of stuff simply look too far disharmonic to be usefull. Not to speak about the poorly written third party applications that exists that don't serve any corporate needs.
From a developers view I believe that GNOME has reached a dead end where scalability isn't possible anymore. People have realized that with the C languge there is no progress and thus decided to code under Python, C++, Java, Ruby or MONO. But personally I believe that having a mature GNOME desktop these days require you to have Python, MONO, Java running next to your regular application, which makes it hard to have all of them incooperate correctly (to work correctly). This is not the problem of having different languages laying around or running in the background but more architectual nature as soon as it comes to bugtracking, feedback, expandability etc. Many bindings are not well implemented and have a lot of attributes not correctly defined which makes applications look and behave differently.
As example I always get back to the legendary Toolbar issues that I like to explain. I do explain it because it's the by far easiest thing people can test on their own system.
When looking at this legendary example picture:
http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screensho t34ji.jpg
You see a bunch of GNOME applications showing different types of Toolbars. I don't want to speak about the images inside the Toolbars but rather how they look. They all look differently, behave differently, react differently, some toolbars are higher than others (a few pixel) others have a drag handle, others show icons only, then others again show text below icons. There is no common approach of doing this correctly. Sure some people say these things are not important. But from a developers point of view - they are. It only shows in what bad shape GNOME really is even today with latest CVS you see the same issues still present. It should give the beginner and advanced users an impression what's wrong. A Desktop Environment should provide a consistent API and framework to do these things correctly. Please load up GNUMERIC, Abiword, Evolution, Evince and a few others and go through your "Menus & Toolbars" capplet (control center) and change around the values and you see that the majority of applications bundled in the corporate GNOME desktop do not react on these changes. Personally I consider these things to be a bug. I already reported many of these issues and recently my toolbar bugreport to gnumeric got closed as NOT A BUG with some random intransparent excuses why the HIG cant be applied to gnumeric. This is quite frustrating since the applications look bad that way (only the aesthetic view that GNOME always wanted to lay big values on). There are so many other areas like button padding, button padding between other buttons and and and.
It's a never ending story. Also I ask myself why tools like Evince or Epiphany (both part of the GNOME desktop) come with an own Toolbar editor while other applications don't support that. From a developers point of view this should be part of the GTK+ Toolkit and made available default to all apps or everything that uses the Toolbar.
Thats the big disadvantage of writing apps in C without proper object orientation (yes I know GNOME has some sort of object orientation). If we look over to KDE for example then we see that every application that uses a Toolbar (not all apps need
If Aqua was only available for linux... :-(
I stopped using either a while back, because both of them required too many mouse clicks and interface searching to get them to do what I wanted, and to clone the setup from place to place. Give me an ASCII configuration file that I can just copy any day. No, it's not "user friendly," but it's Geek friendly. I can read the docs.
I've even started setting up new accounts on my machines using FVWM with a sane default configuration. People tend not to futz with their configurations too much anyway, and the startup time and resource usage is just much less without the overhead of KDE. And, what's more, these are all grad students in Physics, and I *want* them to get facile with Unix. They really ought to know enough Perl to read and write files and manipulate numbers, and know a little programming. Having to figure out text configuration files would be a good exercise, as whiny as it may make them....
Not for everybody, but certainly for me. As a geek, I much prefer FVWM to the overhead of Gnome or even KDE.
-Rob
A lot of people just use whatever the distribution installes by default.
Actually, Gnome works "well enough" these days. It does what I want it to do. This is on Ubuntu. KDE is arguably better, but I don't care much at this point, since Gnome is the better maintained one on Ubuntu.
:-).
I'd love to have Konqueror as a file manager, but also this is in lesser extent than previously. Gnome just doesn't suck anymore
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
It depends on what you're using it for.
Are you a geek, who wants a productive interface? KDE is the way to go - actually, I prefer Windowmaker myself.
OTOH, are you an end user who wants a simplified UI? Gnome is the way to go.
Linus, obviously, is a geek and chooses the former. However, that does not make the choice universal.
That's the best part about Linux and Open Source in general, isn't it? The freedom to choose and use what suits you the best?
Gnome developer Havoc Pennington's response points out that "reducing complexity" was not, in fact, the reason the particular dialog in question doesn't have all the options Linux wanted:
"Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that 'might confuse people' was not the reason. More evidence for my point that 'might confuse people' is the reason made up by others, not the reason given by the decision makers."
Which is not to say that Linus is wrong (in the e-mail he writes that "If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times. And only ever from Gnome.") -- I'm not a big fan of Gnome's lack of features (at least as compared to KDE), but it's not like anyone on Slashdot really conforms to the "average computer user" concept. And Linus surely doesn't either. Maybe Gnome is better for Mom and Grandpa. I'll stick with KDE, myself.
Gnome is great BECAUSE it's simple. The average linux user isn't a moron, so sure, KDE isn't too bad, but if you want to get a wider user base, you'll need to attract some of the not-so-bright users out there. If that's the case, GNOME is perfect. The only GUI I like better is the Mac OSX.
Cheezit! We're boned! - famous 31st Century bending unit
Kudos to KDE!!!
in your face Gnome!!!
Thanks Linus.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You are an expert in operating system kernels. Please keep to what you do best. Users will vote with their own desktop. There is no need for you to teach people what GUI and desktop to use.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Moi aussi.
People see me doing that sometimes, and wonder why I'm going through so much trouble. I have a hard time convincing them that once you've learned it, the shell is far more efficient. (Especially since I type fast.)
I do have a handful of shortcut FVWMButtons on the left side of my screen (virtual screens, clock, xterm, emacs, etc.) for my most-used things, but, yeah, when I have to really do something with the filesystem, give me a shell I know how to use anyway.
-Rob
I respectfully disagree, I like KDE but there is absolutely a need for simplification in the linux world. I think Gnome was chosen for Ubuntu, for example, for very sound reasons. The notion that simplifying your interface being an idiot attractor is true, but that's not a bad thing. Idiots are people too, when we talk about our interfaces and what software we like we have to understand that we are perhaps an exlusive 8 percent of the world population, if that. There are a lot of people out there that haven't had the educational opportunities we enjoy. Giving them free software they can use seems like something we shouldn't sneer at.
Fluxbox all the way.
slashdot reports.
Torvalds is out of line.
He does have a few good points - but seriously, he should really consider to kick the assh*le factor down a bit.
Linus is increasingly 'out there' in his hyperbolic statements. First the BitKeeper fiasco, now the start of a new Gnome/KDE flamewar. Ever read his daily postings on kernel trap? They are obnoxious. I am surprised the kernel effort holds together as well as it does. I personally take his statements on Gnome as anti-advice. He is becoming a most unsafe guardian. Can anyone imagine who would lead the kernel effort if Linus was shoved aside?
an ill wind that blows no good
I do all my stuff in the console anyway....wich shell does linus recommend?
I think Torvalds is the prototype of power-user.
A large part of gimmicks and interface nazism in today interfaces aims at the average or lower-than-average user. As a long time kde user switched to apple, I quickly realized that most of the use-cases I was used to were difficult to obtain with the OSX interface.
Is that a real problem? Dumb people want dumb interfaces. Smart people want smart interfaces. Give a dumb interface to a smart guy, and you obtain the Torvalds situation. Give a smart interface to a dumb guy and all you'll obtain is whining about its complexity.
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
If J Random Anonymous guy posted a similar message to slashdot/his blawgh/etc, he would be ignored or marked as a troll and flamed crispy.
Is there any reason to treat this differently?
I'm a computer (software) guru, and sort of hate computers. They don't work, and often suck up my time with config issues and headaches when I'd rather be doing something that isn't pointless. Ok, maybe I don't hate them, but I'm offended by how ugly the experience is.
Most people want their computer to work a lot like their car or TV. Hit the button, get the content, do the job. This post makes me want to use GNOME.
The goal is simplicity in all things. Someone shouldn't have to think about what is going on, it should be obvious.
The most interesting thing about that book is that the author applies the same principles he espouses for websites to the book. The book is very easily digestible. So, if it works for the web and it works for the book... what else can it apply to? If you follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion you'll realize it applies to lots and lots of things: your code, desktops, phone VRUs, brochures, etc.
Linus is a smart guy and I respect him, but the goal is simple.
I run my own computer business and supporting idiot users is something I must do everyday. I prefer KDE but I think many users can benefit from gnome. I think many can use a Mac easier then Windows. There is merit to having a GUI that is KISS.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I've used both GNOME and KDE, but I decided to use GNOME. Been using it with Fedora Core 3 for over a year now and it works just fine. What's this big problem with GNOME anyway? My 2 biggest complaints are lack of a "show in groups" in the nautilus file view and closing multiple instances of the same program from the taskbar (there's no close all, you have to click close on each one).
Gnome has always seemed to me to be a UI made to look excessively [fill in the blank]: Cute, shiny, hiding the ugly (but important) functional details underneath a glossy appearance. I started using Gnome initially when I didn't know about KDE. I switched over to KDE when I realized that KDE gives me more flexibility to customize the UI to my heart's desire, whereas Gnome is starting to look more like what Windows would have looked like had Bill Gates ported that UI to run on *nix platforms.
Blackbox/Fluxbox anyone?
I do 95% of my work from a shell too, but working in a windowing environment lets me tile shells, etc. I'm tailing output from some program while I'm editing code somewhere else, etc.
Personally I use KDE at work, although I'm a blackbox fan... haven't gotten around to putting it on my work machine. KDE's been good enough haven't been able to justify the time.
-everphilski-
"Please, just tell people to use KDE.
"Use vi, too. And vote Democrat. Oh, and cats are better than dogs. You know what else? Abortion should be legal. So should euthenasia. And as for toast? Butter side up!"
From his message:
it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion, but Linux has grown beyond the scope of "just" Linus Torvalds. The freedom of choice that we enjoy as users of the operating system is among its finest attributes.
Is it possible that Gnome and KDE are simply designed for different audiences? Newbies and other users may enjoy the more straightforward approach that the Gnome developers strive for. Slightly more advanced users such as Linus may prefer a different UI. (I kid, I kid!)
Do you like German cars?
I try both Gnome and KDE whenever a new version comes out. I think Gnome has a much cleaner look, but the spatial thing sucks rotten eggs. With KDE on the other hand, the interface seems klunky at times, however things like KIOSlaves just rocks! Sometimes I wish we could combine them into either a GDE or a Knome... Seriously, for me I like Gnome's interface (with spatial turned off) better than KDE's, but I like what KDE has under the hood better than Gnome.
I was wondering how long it would take for this discussion to come up on Slashdot. It's noteworthy really only because Linus comes across as a 13 year old arsehole in almost all of his messages: if they hadn't been written by "The Linus Torvalds", I doubt people like Nat and Havoc would bother writing such well-thought-out replies to such unpleasant, ignorant flames.
Interesting. 'Interface nazis' (oh look, it's Godwin's Law already) brought consistency to the Mac platform and the Windows platform, and to be honest, that encouraged a lot of success there. Yes there were other issues, but consistency shouldn't be ignored. Additionally, GNOME is getting a lot of play on Ubuntu and Fedora desktops. Consistency breeds ubiquity?
One other thought: maybe this can be a strength of Linux. GNOME takes the intro/simple desktop crowd, KDE takes the ultra-config-alicious crowd. We can start saying things like "Start out with GNOME, but if you feel like a little more control, just check the KDE box when you log in."
Gnome's problem is that, well, they don't have a usable interface design to stick with in the first place. This goes back as far as 2000 - "systems administrators still struggle to install applications on Linux and that antiquated versions of Gnome, a graphical-oriented user interface for the operating system, continue to ship with different distributions of Linux" "http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/st ory/0,10801,54030,00.html"
Yea, because one guy has an opinion, development on all other interfaces will be shut down.
Linus taking a side doesn't mean a thing in the overall KDE/Gnome holy war, any more than if he'd taken a side in Vi/Emacs.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In 1998, I was a very active participant on the Gnome UI mailing list. In fact, the very first Gnome User Interface Guideline was in part based on my proposed one (google for "Rogue GNOME style guide" if you care about the details).
Two things shocked me back then, and from Linus comments it appears that neither of them have changed.
One is that Gnome has a ton of great contributors - and just as many who are not as great. Unfortunately, in areas where the matter is more discussion and consensus based and you can't prove your point by just coding it, the vocal trolls crowd out the valuable contributors.
Two is that within those who contributed the the UI discussion there was a surprising lack not only of experience in the HCI field (ok, I had just started out there myself) but also a strong resistance to pick up the vast literature available or trust in actual end-user studies.
The last was what caused me to quit. How can you design a user interface without talking to the users? You can't. Anyone working in HCI knows that. Assumptions == Disaster
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes. If you don't do what Commissar Linus directs, then the secret kernel police will come and take you away.
I sometimes wonder if Linus just makes these kind of statements to mix things up a bit. KDE and GNOME have made some great leaps and bounds towards a useable desktop in the past 5+ years. Does it really matter? It's not as if one app can't run under the other? I personally like how clean GNOME feels, but I also appreciate that KDE is a great desktop environment as well, especially for people coming from a windows environment. Surely this is just sparking debate, ah bring back the ol Vi versus Emacs debates!
Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""
The Grammar Nazis are keeping a close eye on this instance of 4 sequential punctuation marks.
The Interface Nazis are concerned that their mission may be jeopardized.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Well... I have to say, I understand his feelings but I personally don't want lots of functionality from my windowed environment (just give me an xterm and vi) and I know lots of other non-tech users who are effectiveley idiots when it comes to computers.
Truly I think Icewm or Xfce are better altogether, or some other minimal but am too lazy to change default of ubuntu (current desktop choice).
Typically a user of the SuSE distribution, I have had the opportunity to use very good implementations of both KDE and Gnome. I have no qualms with saying that KDE has some nice applications (AmaroK stands out). In fact, at one point, I was using KDE because Nautilus could not interface with a specific BSD SFTP server, while Konqueror could; but when I figured out how to do it, I switched back to Gnome. I like Gnome because it feels _designed_, whereas KDE simply feels like a hacked~together copy of Windows. Granted, there are obvious differences, and even improvements, but, while individual applications in Gnome may be behind the similar applications in KDE, I see in Gnome to be something far greater than what KDE will be. I use Gnome because of the future I see for it: I want to be a part of what gets it there.
My girlfriend (with absolutely no computer knowledge whatsoever) can use KDE just fine, I really don't know what GNOME is trying to accomplish.
So stop taking what he says as gospel. Yes, he is incredibly intelligent. And yes, he has a very good grasp about what's going on most of the time.
However, this is the same guy that got upset at the Samba guy for reversing bitkeeper.
I'm not arguing with his statement, btw. I've always liked KDE better than gnome. What I am saying is let the poor man have his opinion without starting a flame war.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This is the first time I've found myself agreeing with Linus word-for-word. No "buts", "ifs", "except fors" or "maybes". He's enumerated everything I've said about KDE over Gnome, but that doesn't mean that KDE is perfect, either.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
He's not really out there so much as acting like a packet kiddy on IRC who thinks he can bully everyone.
Ever thought that other people might like different things from you?
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
In all seriousness, as a long time Linux critic (mainly for reasons related to immaturity on a number of fronts, technical, philosophical, marketing, usability, and otherwise), I applaud this statement. Really. Hopefully "that Torvalds said it" will mark some sort of turning point in the Linux world in general towards the realization that usability and design matter, and that the CLI (for example), no matter how fast and effective in the hands of a highly experienced, frequent user, is the antithesis of usability.
In case anyone is wondering, the parents post was brought to you by oooGalaxyooo, a well know Anti-Gnome troll who spends his days copy and pasting the exact same message into every discussion on the net that might be in any way related to Gnome.
Btw, he's the guy who brought you the wonderful successful GoneME fork of gnome, which is indeed gone now.
For more information, feel free to visit his hompage:
http://www.akcaagac.com/index.html
For me, Gnome has been offcially hijacked by the suits ever since they switched the window manager from Sawfish to Metacity--very symbolic the move from a fun scriptable-in-Lisp WM to the most staid and prim window manager around.
It's for the best, I guess, since some kind of boring desktop is needed for corporate adoption of Linux. When you think about it there was bound to be a split between those who need a highly standardised environment (for tech support and the like) and people using GNU/Linux as their personal desktop, who want to be able to customise everything and have lots of little amusements. So although I much prefer GTK to QT, I'm going to have to agree with Linus and suggest that people who are not big businesses but just ordinary computer geeks should probably just use KDE.
Believe it or not, there are many people who don't like looking at feet, and the last thing we'd want is to be staring at a stupid-looking foot all day on our computers.
They might as well adopt the GOATSEcX picture as their logo...
It would seem to me that users willing to choose Linux over Windows (or even OSX) are savvy enough consumers to be able to choose their desktop environment. I don't think we need to be told what desktop to use - we seem to be making good choices by ourselves already!
Meh
This reminds me of the hoopla that surrounded Patrick Volkerding's decision to drop GNOME from Slackware Linux. Now, Patrick is followed by Linus. Frankly, even though these are personal choices, it's really bad PR for GNOME. I think they need to get their act back together, pronto.
As an aside, I hate both GNOME and KDE. I use XFCE or fluxbox exclusively on the machines I use. That does not prevent me from using the best applications and fluxbox in particular is a major productivity booster.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
copied from here:
1 -04-018-26-OP-SS-NV-0089
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-1
Using GNOME feels like a step backwards in time with it's quirky and limiting interface (for experienced/power users) that aspires to be Mac like.
IMHO, it is time to focus on one UI (KDE) and a dozen distros at most with a unified GUI driven software update/upgrade utility. Users should not be forced to use the command line for updating / patching the kernel, video drivers, etc. Only then will there be hope that regular users will start adopting Linux and Open Source en masse.
I was pleasantly surprised to see KDE developpers rally to GNOME's cause, or at least, advocate the use of GNOME for those for whom it works, regardless of their own opinion. Both DEs are there to stay and the sooner people accept this, the sooner we can build a strong integration layer and move on toward world domination. (Which is why the GNOME people really should get rid of Ximian and its DE fundamentalists if they want to make any progress, by the way -- at least until Ximian gets out of their corporate-love funk and re-learn the OSS virtues of collaboration...)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dece mber/msg00027.html
Just a sample:
We're not aiming for "powerfully extensible". We're aiming for "Just Works". Some people will
hate that. Some will love it. Personally, I'd rather have passionate users, lovers and haters, than be than average and ignored, and I think you'll find most GNOME developers feel the same way.
Personally, I think Linus ought to know better by now than put out a self-centered post like that. There are more users in the world than just geeks. Most aren't geeks, in fact. For Linux on the Desktop to survive beyond the lifespan of its proponents, it needs to acknowledge that, not fall trap of intestinal power struggles.
Thank goodness. Maybe now the Gnome devs will figure out that they need to stop assuming that every user is an idiot; maybe they'll actually put good and inituitive features in their file manager now that Linus has said this. I personally don't like KDE's interface too much, but Gnome is what makes me want to bomb the Gnome dev mailing list with reports on its shortcomings. Too bad I don't have the time or will to actually do this.
...that uses an Apple Mac (with a similar K.I.S.S. UI approach to Gnome). Apart from his kernel work, this guy is proving to be more of a tit every day. He should leave comments on UI design to people with some sort of clue.
KDE is too keen to put every single bloody option whether advanced or not straight in your face, rendering it a pain to find the simple settings. Not only that but the defaults are horrible including the single-click-to-launch paradigm. I spent a good while looking to change that behaviour, foolishly thinking it might set be somewhere desktop prefs which it isn't - it's in the mouse settings. On top of that, you only have to look at Konq or KMail and you'll see six or seven menu items in a row starting with Configure.
The one thing you can hand to KDE is that it is consistent, but it sorely needs to be streamlined. It's not hard to see why enterprise versions of Linux use GNOME - it's so much simpler and cleaner. I truly expect that supporting 100 KDE users would be significantly more work work than 100 GNOME users.
In theory you should be able to use whatever window manager you want but I suspect they fsck'd it way beyond that point. Plus with the graphical configuration stuff, some developers figure that with a graphical interface they don't have to document the configuration file formats, which wouldn't be too bad except they like to change the names and locations of the config files from release to release. And more annoyingly, the graphical api's only do 90% of the job, so you have to go in an manually configure the last 10%, and remember to not use the graphical interface after that since it will delete your manual settings. E.g., try setting two ip addresses on a NIC, one static and one dynamic, the latter only to get /etc/resolv.conf set by DHCP configuration.
N/T
Well this could be the other argument: "Gnome is for idiots, KDE is too, for that matter any windowing system is designed with idiots in mind. They are just dumbed down. My choice is CLI, there are so many programs written for it and it is not intuitive at all, just like a system interface should be."
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
... for getting getting the invokation Godwin's Law out of the way.
I really hate that "click" around thing in Gnome (I have it in gimp and sometimes when I use gnom-editor). In KDE apps I just type in the path and thanks to autocomplete I am really fast to arrive where I want to go.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
sighs
I didn't mean that. If Linus had said "Personally, I prefer KDE to Gnome" then we could all ignore him and use whatever desktop environment we liked.
However, he wants people to use KDE, based solely on personal preference, which is nothing more than zealotry "Please, just tell people to use KDE". Because, you know, people shouldn't even get a choice in the matter. It doesn't even affect him.
I'm not saying that people are going to use KDE more because of this, I'm just condoning his actions.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Your overlord has spoken....
I see that Linux is now one step closer to taking over the desktop...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Don't bother using Ubuntu, since Gnome will be your interface. Just throw out that entire distro.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Someone important had to take a stand on this issue. Gates is probably wringing his hands today in worry, now that people can focus their efforts on KDE. Gnome isn't dead, but it's time to relegate it to the backroom distributions that want to use it, and present a unified front[end] for consumer distributions.
Imagine if the Windows Start button looked different on all distributions of Windows since 95? [The XP changes don't count, much]. Consmers need a "look" that says, "This is a linux computer and I like that". They don't need to be looking at a computer and wondering, "Is this Guhnome, or KDE... I want a doughnut."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Does Linus mandate what desktop(s) the various commercial distros use?
Nice knee-jerk, though.
The only thing really wrong with GNOME is Nautilus. It's always been incredibly buggy and slow. If they ripped Nautilus out and replaced it with something usable, GNOME would be next to perfect.
Do it. There's a lot of interesting answers. Most interestingly, it seems that the problems which Linus (and popular opinion) ascribes to Gnome user interface design decisons are actually considered bugs by Gnome developers. It seems that, when giving the choice of working on sensible defaults or in advanced configuration options, Gnome devels prefer the first, so that sometimes applications misses the advanced configuration; but they're not actually opposed to them (provided that they have a nice UI, separated from the basic options). It's a matter of priorities.
So Gnome is not about "dumb users", it's about focusing on an usable system out-of-the-box. If you like customizing your WM, you'll probably hate Gnome, because it's not their focus. I hate WM customization, so I like Gnome better than KDE (and ratpoison better than Gnome). OTOH, I love customizing my programming environment, so I like Emacs better tham vim or gedit. Differente things for different people, really.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
No shit but it wasn't an anonymous user it was Linus Torvalds, father of the Linux kernel, so of course his opinion is more newsworthy than some anonymous person. Same thing when people talk the Iraq war. If a head of state makes a comment, it is news! If someone random person makes a comment nobody cares.
.... oh, you didn't have one. You just felt like you should try and contribute something to the discussion but then realised you had nothing to say so you just wrote the first thing that came into your head. Think next time.
What the hell is your point?
First it was the Tookie Williams flame wars and now this. Maybe I'll just go hibernate until Spring.
/I R KDE user - sysadmin.
//Children R Gnomish types.
///Mama R WinBlows user.
It's a very slick example of what Gnome needs to do more of. Gnome has focused its efforts on simplifing the interface for the masses. They've made good progress but the masses seem unimpressed.
It's time to think about finding elegant ways to put that power back in while keeping it transparent to the masses.
Ah, but see, what you're seeing on the Mac is actually elegant simplicity. There's power lurking there.
Sure the playlist selector in iTunes only has one button to add a new playlist, but hold down the Shift key while your mouse is in the playlist area and the button turns into an add new Smart playlist button. Or in the Browse area, click on the column header to Genre, Artist or Album and you zoom back to the top of the list.
These sort of rewards await those who explore. But for the faint of heart, the simple interface still functions.
Linus is not complaining about the interface being simple, he is simply pointing out that not exposing features doesn't automatically equal usability.
He also points out why he thinks that talking about the "normal users" is a logical fallacy and will lead to bad design decisions:
"> The majority of end-users want a simple printer dialog.
This is a great example of being a F.I.
There is no such thing as a "majority of end users" in general. For example, maybe _I_ am in what you _claim_ to be a majority, in that I want a simple printer dialog - because I have a simple printer, and even simpler printer needs.
So a simple printer dialog doesn't bother me, and as such you can count me in your "majority".
But I can guarantee you one thing: the _vast_ majority of people are part of a specific minority when it comes to something. This is somethign that the F.I. "interface designers" in the Gnome sense seems to continually overlook.
For example, maybe I don't care about printers. But I _do_ care about my mouse. If I can't control the left/middle/right button actions, I get really upset. Again, the "majority" of people may not care, so by your majority argument, the mouse setup should be so simple that the majority of people can never get confused. But I _do_ care.
In other words: your "majority" argument is total and utter BULLSHIT. It can be true for any particular feature, but it's simply not true in general.
To put it in mathematical terms: "The Intersection of all Majorities is the empty set", or its corollary: "The Union of even the smallest minorities is the universal set".
It's a total logical fallacy to think that the intersection of two majorities would still be a majority. It is pretty damn rare, in fact, because these things are absolutely not correlated.
And the technical term for somebody who claims to do user interface design and not understand this fact is a "FUCKING IDIOT".
And this has _nothing_ to do with "technical users". Even totally non-technical users care about something. In fact, it might be their printer, and having a way to set the paper type and resolution by hand.
Another way of saying this: we're _all_ "special" some way. We're damn quirky, even the nontechnical among us.
But hey, just continue to remove all that confusing functionality from Gnome. I don't care. I voted with my feet.
Linus"
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0 000000057.html/ Spolsky would probably say both are crap - and I tend to agree.
It's just his personal recommendation, and I suppose if anyone can be said to have important input on the subject it might be him. In the end, we're all going to do what we want anyway. It's not like this is Moses coming down from the mountain (I bring you these 15... CRASH... 10, 10 commandments).
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Unix developers are not known for their quality interfaces. man == help? A dozen incompatable widget sets from Athena through KDE? The ability to modify your window manager through endless flat files, yet no way to do drag-and-drop between applications in a consistent manner? Much less cut-and-paste.
Coming from crappy-GUI-but-you-can-customize-it-all-you-like land, Linus is making the classic propeller-cap mistake: he thinks GUIs should have a myriad of options. Does he not realize that this is one of the primary reasons that Linux has failed in the userspace marketplace? Most computer users -- and by most I mean 98% -- do not wear propeller caps.
For these 98% non-Linuses, a user interface needs to do three things properly:
Linus wants a #4 Be Customizable, but in my experience people who complain about that have never themselves succeeded in making a UI for which the first three are true. I have absolutely no doubt that Linus falls in that category. Sounds to me like he needs to go sit in a corner and let the real GUI designers do their work.
What the hell? I use GNOME because Firefox and Evolution use GTK. As a normal desktop user, I want looks and some ease of use and SIMPLICITY! Unfortunately Mr Linus, GNOME is much better from a ease-of-use/usability point of view; I am no kernel genius like you, I want my OS to be like Google. And so you say Novel just got itself wasted with the Ximian acquisition? Hah!
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
He certainly sounds like a real KDE user
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
I would say OSX is the culmination of power and simplicity both rolled into one OS right now. If you feel it is too simple, you can open it right up, or dumb it down completely if you feel there is too much exposed. It's really a point i'd like to see all *nix based OS's to arrive at some day.
Gnome is a great GUI environment and all...but...enough simplicity is enough. I recently compiled Firefox 1.5 and now when I try to save a file it uses a gnome save dialog, even though I'm in KDE. I tried to fix it, but if it really matters to me I'll try again. I'm sorry but that save interface thing is just ugly, dumbed down, and totally non-functional. Windows 3.1 had a better save dialog. I'm not stupid, K :) Don't get me wrong, gnome is a good environment and all...just not for me.
Actually, Gnome works "well enough" these days.
Adequacy, that's what I strive for. Excellence is truly overrated.
Suse-Gnome?
Fedora-Gnome?
Redhat - Gnome?
Ubunto - Gnome?
If that's the case, and I could easily be wrong, seems like a bit of an uphill battle for KDE.
I've been using linux for years now, and I still can't figure out why each desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, etc.) requires a whole new suite of applications. I thought the whole idea behind *nix was to reuse and make programs that perform one task and perform it well. I guess this point is lost when speaking of DEs. Wouldn't it be nice, as a developer, to write a GUI app once then be able to deploy that app onto any environment and have it actually work? And I know that you can still run a KDE app while running Gnome, but the point is that you have to pick which one of these environments to code in. I guess we'll never really get true abstraction of UI code for linux.
Mod parent up!
I remember seeing a poster in college stating that about 1% of the world's population has a four year degree. That impressed me. I realized that I was becoming part of an elite. The eight percent mentioned by the parent post seems a bit off based on this. Maybe complex expressions on the command line at times are the ideal tool to accomplish a specific goal, but lets remember who we're leaving out.
Meh
He's not really out there so much as acting like a packet kiddy on IRC who thinks he can bully everyone.
Did he ever act otherwise?
May the Maths Be with you!
With regards to KDE versus GNOME, the best thing to do is let nature take its course. What I mean by that is let people use which one they prefer. From past experience, those who use KDE end up being more productive. And increased productivity often times leads to increased financial success.
I recently did some consulting for a firm which allowed their developers and administrative staff to use GNOME or KDE. It was each employee's choice which to use. When review time came around, a study was done into which desktop was used by the most productive users.
By far the most productive users, both developers and secretaries/financial officers/etc., were those who used KDE and related software, such as KOffice. The developers who used KDE were the ones who wrote the code with the fewest number of bugs, and the secretaries who used KDE were the ones who were able to produce letters and documents with the fewest drafts.
There was one notable exception, however. One developer who reported using GNOME was amongst the top three (I believe it was) developers. Further investigation revealed that while he was using GNOME, it was only as a program launcher. He was using KDevelop, Konqueror and other KDE software while working.
Overall, they weren't sure if it was a matter of productive people choosing KDE, or KDE allowing people to be more productive. I instinctively feel it was some of both.
The best thing to do is let people use what they want. In the end, their choice will either help or hinder their productivity. Those who are no productive will lose their jobs, and slide into irrelevancy, leaving only the productive. From my past experiences, it would appear that GNOME has become the least productive of the two desktops.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I picked KDE for personal developer workstation long ago, at times when it was not so robust and stable as it is today, because of experience with long term big software projects. I recognized better design in inrastructure and architecture, so I predicted KDE as a huge project will be better managable in the future, when stability will come. This future is now.
So, the big difference is not how it looks, dear slashdotters, but how it works inside.
Of course, it does not prevent me to use Fluxbox on weaker platforms or individual Gtk apps, pocketly smallest of my machines runs GPE. And people without insight of software arcana may have other criteria for desktop, they even perform silly actions I never do to my computers, such as listening music and watching movies.
There you are, staring at me again.
When I install GNOME out of the box in Debian, it automatically mounts my USB drives. I still haven't this functionality with KDE.
For looks, I prefer KDE.
...leads to wasting more time customizing the DesktopOS rather than using programs to do actual tasks.
The trick is to get a desktop to doesn't need customization out of the box and still get everything you need by default. The only one that almost gets it right is OS X, but it can use a bit of work too.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I personally like the design philosophy behind Gnome (The Sensible Default) in general, and spatial browsing and the file dialog in particular, but I switched to Kubuntu over the weekend after Nautilus crashed for the zillionth time on me. I just couldn't take it anymore--the file browser is the fundamental component of the Desktop and having it freeze/crash every time something out of the ordinary happens with a remote share is just too much*. And it's slow. I like all the functionality it offers, with the previews and what not, but browsing a large media directory is an exercise in patience while the 2.4Ghz Celery processor wheezes and gasps to produce thumbnails.
So I switched. I can say without reservation, that on my machine KDE is fast. Konqueror is waaaay faster than Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany and it doesn't seem to peg the cpu on plugin-filled pages (or when it does it doesn't seem to affect the rest of the desktop). Kontact/KMail/KOffice look much more integrated than Evolution/OO.org (I also found Evolution to be very slow). KDE also seems to follow Windows paradigms more closely, so I have fewer "support issues" from my wife (it's her machine).
That said, I much prefer Gnome's aesthetic. Honestly, why would anybody want to wade through menus and menus of configuration? A right-click on any app has:
Configure Part-of-app...
Configure App...
Configure Window-bits-of-app...
Configure Panel...
Configure KDE...
That's just annoying. I also prefer Gnome's approach to menus, and it's religious commitment to reducing clutter. KDE's shiny icons I don't care for either, but all these complaints are things that can probably be configured away (Hah!).
Torvald's complaints are wrong, but his conclusion is right. KDE is fantastic.
Todd
PS I still use Gnome on my machine, I am a glutton for punishment.
* After Miss Naughty crashed 3 times while trying to delete the Firefox lock file (why does Mozilla still have this idiotic profile dialog?), I tried to log a bug using the bug buddy tool, but it required sendmail be configured, or save to disk. I swear I couldn't get the chooser to save it and gave up, very disgusted. Probably user error, but I was still disgusted.
^_^ I am a gnome warlock, but i am not a gnome linux user *giggle* --- KDE or hmm... CDE .. is good. Previously KDE to me have an issue, i.e QT library, but now ^_^ all seems fine isn't it ^^
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/
(of course, you then still use KDE for the apps and printing; Linus is spot on there)
Gnome has long ceased to be useful. Not only that, it is built on top of an anemic toolkit and poorly conceived libraries. With the exception of GRAMPS (done in python and using gtk's interface bindings) and evolution, there are no Gnome applications that I find useful or well done. They tend to be buggy, underdeveloped, poorly integrated and lacking features. The range goes from the top applications (Nautilus, Abiword) to lesser known ones.
KDE not only advaces in leaps and bounds, but it has a very powerful toolkit (Please, GNOME fudders don't start the bullshit about Qt's licensing, we are simply sick of it).
I think Gnome has done a lot of harm to the potential for a free desktop having widestream acceptance. Its survival depends on two things: 1) a historical decision that Red Hat once made without enough thought based not on technical merit but its developer pool at the time 2)the ego of its existing developers who are too attached to their "toy" to give it up or assess its viability objectively.
I have done lots of terminal server installations and lots of user-testing and 85% of users simply prefer KDE. They find it easier to use, more intuitive and better thought out. Once KDE 4 is out(with the combination of new toolkit, Oxygen icons and the appeal project), it will simply be geourgeous and a wonderful platform that will have nothing to envy on the proprietary or free-software side.
Anyone who disagrees needs to try the latest kde (KPDF, ktb, kaffeine, Kontact, Tellico, konqueror, the range of kdeedu apps, krita, koffice). Try Suse 10 and compare. Give yourself at least a week to overcome your cognitive dependence on whatever else you have used before.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Hi,
;-)
:-P
Tangent fest
On 12/12/05, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> The reason I don't use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of
> is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different
> mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor
> users? Here's a hint: it's not the small and fast one.
Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that
"might confuse people" was not the reason. More evidence for my point
that "might confuse people" is the reason made up by others, not the
reason given by the decision makers.
First some context. The overall metacity plan was to first get all the
defaults right as priority one, and then add more configurability and
options consistent with keeping the defaults right. This was the
driving "principle" if there was a principle at all. (The weekend I
started on metacity the motivation was more "my # %$ WM doesn't work,
I'm just going to write one that works how I like")
On the specific feature of arbitrary button bindings, the full
discussion is archived in bugzilla. But my memory of this feature is:
- I put in a lot of special cases to get the default behavior exactly right;
the event handlers for mouse buttons do not look like "run the
action associated with
this button," they are more complicated
- I spent a few days trying to code a patch that made button actions
configurable
while preserving all the detailed behaviors I had coded, and I just
kind of gave
up because the patch was too hard/complicated/big and I wasn't willing to
break the default behavior in order to simplify the code.
- I did put in configuration of the most common stuff people wanted to change,
like double click action and alt+click modifier key, and this made
most people
happy (based on reduction in bugzilla/email traffic)
My patch is still in bugzilla, if anyone wants to start from it and
find the simple and elegant way to code it. The patch as I left it is
buggy though and had a couple "hard to fix" problems. Plus it's
against a pretty old version of metacity I guess.
BTW, though I confess that I like to reject window manager patches, I
also spent a ton of time getting EWMH usable and supporting it in
GNOME. The only purpose of EWMH is to make the window manager
replaceable.
You may be noticing that I like the idea of "choice of two
well-focused designs" better than "single choice of one
nobody-hates-it design."
Anyway. The primary issue with preferences in metacity was never
confusing users - that would only be an issue with displaying prefs in
the dialog, i.e. unlimited prefs would be OK, as long as they were
hidden. The more important issue I always had in my mind was the
quality of the defaults, and ability to spend time polishing the
defaults. The tradeoff came from amount of personal time I had, code
complexity, and interdependencies among prefs.
But, I pretty often flamed people complaining about lack of prefs in
bugzilla, so I can't really whine about being misunderstood
> Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users
> just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection
> thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.
I don't think "too confusing" was the reason here either, though I
can't speak authoritatively since I didn't design this.
There was also a bad rap here since in the original design spec (and
current file selector) you can in fact just type the filename. The
text entry box appears as soon as you press a key. You can also press
Ctrl+L to get a text box with autocomplete. But version 1.0 didn't
have this since the c
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I like Gnome. A lot. I like not having to be tied into the KDE window manager. I like all sorts of its nifty functionality.
Except, as noted, when said functionality goes away.
This has been happening for *years*. With every new incarnation of Gnome, I wonder what feature is either gone, or disabled by default. Now, granted, disabled-by-default isn't a bad thing, per-se. If you're a savvy user, it's expected that you'll be able to figure out how to enable it. But sometimes, it ain't that easy -- especially when the menu options aren't all that intuitive.
I mean, what the hell's up with their whole funky "system paradigm" in Nautilus? "Intuitive," my ass. How about a simple hierarchy like most every GUI OS sine the Mac, fer Pete's sake?
Argh. It ain't enough to make me switch to KDE -- I *like* Enlightenment, dammit -- but I certainly see where Linus is coming from, and agree wholeheartedly.
I'm sorry, Miguel, Havoc, etc., but in your attempt to figure out how to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you're pushing away "real" users -- the ones who started using Gnome in the first place, 'cause it didn't try to wrap them up in KDE-cotton.
I loved Sawfish when it was the default window manager. Metacity, by contrast, felt impoverished. I've long since gotten used to Metacity, of course, and it's not half bad; it's just vaguely working in the background.
Not long ago, I tried out Sawfish again, just for old times' sake. It is absolutely horrible. I had forgotten - to take one example - that you actually had to pick which of several algorithms for edge affinity between windows to use. In Metacity, there is affinity, it works and up until that point I had never even thought about that. I never needed to. And that was just one of many, many such issues with Sawfish. Never on my life will I go back to such a demented design.
I remember actually liking spending two days reconfiguring my desktop in the old Gnome1 days - of course, that was just thesis avoidance behaviour, I realize now; in the abscence of a craptasticly tweakable UI, I would have had the university record on Tetris or northern Europe's cleanest student kitchen instead.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I switched from KDE to Gnome for the simple reason that Gnome provided more of what I wanted: chiefly, I find adding buttons to the panel is easier in Gnome; and the "updates are available" button in Gnome is brilliant. I also find browsing files quicker (Nautilus opens up much quicker than Konquerer).
I'd like to see KDE developers take some lessons from Gnome: if they provide the things that Gnome is better at currently, I'll switch back. Until then, I'm a happy Gnome.
I use ion: http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/
Doesn't sound like linus for me. Do we have a proof that he actually wrote that or is there someone who thought "Hey I will create the biggest troll ever in telling to people on the Gnome mailing list to use KDE, and sign with linus's name". And if this is the case, if may be laughing by reading slashdot today.
I can sum it up quickly: While KDE has much better applications, and has a nice Kontrol Panel, QT is bloated and slow. Gnome's applications are underdeveloped and lack the features that KDE's applications have, GTK2 is quite fast. Personally I use Gentoo and set my use flags to comple GTK2 support and remove QT support, and for user interface I use fluxbox and aterm. This is quite fast and works well for me. I assume that Linus is refering to newbee's to and kind of _nix. I personally will not be using KDE, I don't care what Linus says, who made him Jesus? I am sure that Jesus would use a command prompt. Hello? 10 Commandments??
Right now, I need Eclipse a LOT more than I need KDE. So, when someone ports SWT to QT, I'll probably be the first one to switch. Until then, I'll be in Gnome.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Sure, advanced users like Mr Torvalds probably are better served by a desktop environmnent like KDE. Here they can configure things that "idiot" doesn't care about or even know exists.
The problem is, that there are more "idiot" users out there in the business world than there are Linus Torvaldses. If we design for the Linus Torvaldses of the world, Linux will get a very small user base and that will make Linux less interesting to companies porting software and drivers for the Linux platform.
The elite user is also perfectly capable of replacing a simple Gnome deskop with another more advanced one (e.g. KDE). However, the "idiots" will not be able to replace KDE with Gnome. That's why Gnome is better.
When it comes to GUI design the "it will confuse the user" point of view, is just as valid as the "it is too complex to do" point of view. Not realizing that, is a very common mistake by people with an engineering or computer science background.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
KDE has eye-candy for n00bs, but try getting any real work done on it. Just try.
Just what to you mean by real work?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
WTF?
I have to do *what* to see hidden files? That's documented *where*?
Anyway. Given the bloat of KDE and Gnome, everyone should be having a look at XFce and GnuStep instead.
Deleted
To claim that Linus is not a "normal user" is to imply that you understand what a "normal user" is. You can't define something by giving a list of things that this thing is NOT. You define it by stating what it *is*.
I've seen lots of people falling into this trap -- trying to make decisions by stating that something doesn't measure up to some threshhold but never defines what the threshhold is (usually because it can't be defined).
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
While straying completely and utterly offtopic here, remember that (i) the grammar there is indeed correct (though there's probably a hidden tag between the two double quotes) and (ii) the majority of people here are either programmer-types (understand that at the end of a paragraph that they're all closing tags, so the "" is effectively equal to }} rather than {} ) or don't care/notice/etc, or both.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Hahahaha. Perhaps I should switch to Kubuntu after all!
I kill harmless processes for sport
You're hinting at it: whatever you're designing, targeting those 'dumb' users first, seems like a good start to me. Why? If you have a dumbed down interface and a skilled user, that user will ALWAYS find a way to replace/configure that interface to suit his/her needs. So: no problem, just a little tweaking work to be done by a power user. If OTOH you start with a complex interface and a 'dumb' user, that user is screwed/lost. Big or even unsolvable problem for that user.
So if that would mean Gnome primarily targets 'dummies', then I'm all for it. IMHO, there's nothing dumb about clearing the path for dummies to a Linux desktop. For power users, leave it to themselves to figure out how they want things. BTW: Who cares about these silly Gnome vs. KDE fights anyway? Just try 'm both, then pick what you like.End-users with prior Windows experience tend to take to KDE much better. That's only partly because KDE is more similar to what they're used to in Windows. What's often missed in the aim for "simplified" is that for real-world use in business etc., simplified doesn't mean that it should lack functionality, only that the functionality should be well-integrated.
Gnome fails on that front. Speculating, I wonder if it's because geeks designing the interface they think is suitably simplified for use by those different from themselves gives the worst of both worlds - geeks often aren't good at figuring out what people other than themselves want.
I used Gnome myself for years before switching to KDE, and I have to say switching totally transformed my "Linux desktop experience". Admittedly,
But I know salespeople who've tried both Gnome and KDE and come down firmly on the KDE side.
Come off it, he didn't mean that people should be forbidden to use Gnome and you should know it. I bet Linus couldn't care less if some people absolutely love Gnome (and obviously some do), but he doesn't and that's his right (he's using the very possibility of choice you're saying he's taking away from others).
:)
:).
If there are tens of thousands of Linus-worshippers out there who automatically drop Gnome just because Linus did they have only themselves to blame for not using their own preferences to make a choice. Somehow I don't think that will happen because you didn't all start using Linux on ppc-architectures (which Linus does afaik) now did you? *imagines hordes of wannabe nerds buying Apple just to wipe it off* lol
And I don't think "condone" means what you want it to mean since you're making a strawman argument in order to criticize.
Disclaimer: I use Flux-like GUIs, (thinking) people will use whatever fits them best and that can be anything: cue the CLI-fanatics
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
Maybe I just suffer from using a version of GNOME that's a couple revs behind, but while it may be simple on its face, my experiences with the guts (in cases of failure, or specific and detailed types of configuration changes) are that it's a big ole mess of spaghetti that looks to me like it's trying far too hard to emulate the worst aspects of the Windows Registry. Unfortunately, my company standardized on GNOME due to economic concerns (QT not being free as in beer you know).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
This is going to spark the flamewar that burns down Slashdot.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
KDE offers greater flexability on how you want your desktop environment to look, feel and behave. and what isn't provided by KDE directly can be made with superkaramba.
I disagree with the comment because a interface is not just done for ease of use.
Sure, easy of use provides benefits for swtichers but the most important thing is to make something INTELLIGENT and something that works with your mentality, not against you.
Ever had one of these long and annoying dialogs on Windows? You get only Yes, No and Cancel buttons. On a Mac, you get buttons sensitive to context and making your work faster and more effective.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
Aren't things like file open (save, print, etc) dialogs important enough that we should all band together and form a standard dialogs library? Something which has a completely unchanging interface (all the important things, like how things are actually entered), but has hooks to allow extensability by a desktop (I don't care if you want fancy icons or something, let's provide hooks for that)
Common Dialogs are far too important to have any ties to a particular anything. I've wanted to make some common dialogs for a long while now, but of course I'm a CLI guy so the key component in my mind would be an embedable 1-line terminal. (I mean, you've got a text box there looking at the filesystem, why wouldnt you want to run a full shell in it?). That is to say: I always think too far-fetched, and so the details prevent me from actually doing anything.
Once again another "I'm an idiot and I thought of it, why arent there a bunch of smarter people getting together and doing it?"
(desktops suck! Use gwm and stab anyone who tries to link against a kde or gnome library!)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Possibly. Me? I'd like to see KDE functionality with the _ability_ to simplify like gnome (maybe using something similar to xine's settings system.. beginner to master of the known..)
I'd also like to see the Starterbar gDesklet handle KDE's quicklauncher. But dreams are dreams. I'll have to code the damn thing myself.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Try using elinks for a web browser and WordPerfect 5.1 in Dosbox. :)
~ roscivs
Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Looks like Linus has learnt this lesson.
Why is he posting on the gnome list?
Following along the lines of the FSF, don't you mean Berkely/vi versus MIT/Emacs?
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
Linus has a real reason to do this:
Gnome/GTK is backed up by many companies, including redhat and novell -- the two bigger players in the linux market. The development of gnome is adapting to their needs, it simply is not an open project anymore, but this is another discussion. The point is, that being the default DE in those distros, pretty much makes it the main DE of linux, it's the first thing most new users will see when they install linux. And Linus being who he is, and doing what he does on OSDL, should be allowed an opinion on this.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
So stop taking what he says as gospel. Yes, he is incredibly intelligent. And yes, he has a very good grasp about what's going on most of the time. However, this is the same guy that got upset at the Samba guy for reversing bitkeeper.
You are bucking against human nature. Linus is an authority figure, and whatever he says will instantly be heavily-laden with the appeal to authority. People are easily influenced by authority. How else should they make their decisions? By relying on their own incomplete experience? By trusting their own faulty judgement? By following their peers who are tainted with the same faults? Obeying some impersonal authority figure seems just as good if not better than any of those other choices, and the fact that authority figures are obeyed proves this.
I'm not stating that authority figures *should* be obeyed, only that they are by the virtue of the "bugs" in the human mind. Nor am I attempting to make a misanthropic argument. I'm just trying to point out that we are all influenced by authority, and that it's probably more powerful than you realize.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
How about this? Use whatever makes you happy? Only users that have no idea on the installation of a Window Manager shouldn't have the right to choose.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
We are not starting a flame war... we agree with him... Gnome fanboys are starting a flamewar against us poor KDE users... but the big Penguin is on our side!!
Fluxbox is so wonderfully lightweight, and rox-filer file manager is just so functional, i can get by just great - and it goes blazing fast.
The thing i like best about flux+rox-filer though, is if it crashes, its easy as heck to recover from - not that it crashes a lot. Theres not much TO crash... kde and gnome were always crashing once every few days for unexplained reasons (but i think it had a lot to do with background services). Fluxbox has gone fine for weeks, and it does "what i need" (i use my computer utilitarianistically).
I think it's safe to say that the reason most of the Slackware community wasn't upset by the fact that Gnome was cut is that most of us didn't use it in the first place. I would say that, on the whole, the Slackware userbase isn't one that needs/wants things to be dumbed down for them. I personally know a number of Slack users who treat window managers as a way to display a lot of terminals and a firefox instance.
As for me, XFCE does the trick for me. It's fast to configure, it improves the appearance of both GTK and QT applications (GAIM, for instance, looks very pretty... amazingly) and it displays things at a sane font size. (I spent a long time trying to get everything a uniform size in KDE, it never really worked) And did I mention it starts much faster than KDE or Gnome?
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
As a desktop environment, I prefer KDE, but when I develop GUIs, I use GTK. Actually, I use wxWidgets, which under Linux, uses GTK. The reason they wrap GTK for Linux is licensing.
When it comes to the Linux kernel, I am a firm believer in open source. Hardware should have open interfaces. This isn't idealism. The kernel needs to be STABLE, and the best way to ensure that is to have drivers open source. This makes the kernel portable and upgradable.
But when it comes to userland, where the kernel is able to isolate a process so that it can't damage anything else, there's less need to be so concerned. Plus, one of the things that's going to bring more open source software to Linux is the adoption of Linux by companies that produce closed-source applications. Oracle for Linux is important because more people will use Linux.
The issue with KDE is the Qt license. It's pure GPL. That means you can't write a Qt-based application without your entire application having to be under GPL. That isn't always favorable. So the wxWidgets people, wanting to be somewhat looser with their licensing, chose GTK, because it uses the LGPL license.
Blizzard?
Havoc?
Linus?
Where do these people get such cool names?
I started using gnome back in Redhat 6.0 (I think). It always did everything I wanted it to, so I still use it.
My brother uses KDE, and every year, we have a flameware about it around the dinner table for the holidays. (Much to the joy of the relatives)
I will cary on with Gnome because otherwise, it would spoil Christmas!
When i first started using ubuntu with gnome, i found it hard to do the normal day to day functions. It didnt seem to have enough options avail. So i switched to kde 3.5 and couldnt be happier. I like konquer tabs, just seems like i am more productive with kde
..if not to make the computer easier to use? To that end, Gnome is doing an excellent job!
If you're a hardcore computer geek, then you can already untilize the full power and flexibility of Linux from the command line. The whole point of having Graphical User Interfaces is to make Linux easier to use for those who aren't hardcore geeks. If you really want to improve Linux, to make it more usable to more people, then you should be supporting Gnome's efforts to do so.
I've got to say it: All Window Managers suck. GUIs suck in general. Not that I'm particularly fond of the arbitrary command switches, but at least it's easy to pull up a manpage or use a --help. IMHO, the problem with GUIs is they, by definition, impose a way of working on you. For example, if I want to view a list of files in a directory, GUIs fill the screen with lots of extra clutter. Finding the single file you want is sometimes painful. Even if you put the window in text mode, your options for manipulating a listing are limited. For example, on the shell you could do:
:D I wouldn't be able to work without them.
find . -name "*.log" -exec ls -l {} \; |sort -nk5
It may look imposing, but I can type that within a few seconds... or faster if I'm in vi mode or in the bash shell. Doing a similar thing in the GUI requires several more steps, if it can be done at all (you can't easily descend directories in most GUIs).
Of course, you need GUIs for other tasks. Try editing video without a GUI and you're in for a lot of pain. What's some good features:
1) Skill level based menus - One thing IMHO that's a good idea is having the "Advanced" menu option that unhides more esoteric commands. It's in some of the GUIs (Windows included) and is useful for me.
2) Icons that grow a la the MacOS GUI. For years I've had miniature icons on my taskbar. As my screen resolution got bigger, it seems the icons got tinier. I could use larger icons, but I hate wasting screen real-estate. By making the icons grow on demand is a useful feature.
3) Multiple desktops -- The GUI equivalent of "screen"
4) Transparency on hover - playing with some experimental WMs and found that the ability to quickly see what's in a window below without focusing or unshading is pretty useful in some working setups (editing web pages, graphics). It's annoying in others though..
Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).
People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.
They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.
I've used Gnome. It's a very satisfactory system. It'll sell, if you let it. Anything that makes the user think, won't. Because it's just the user-interface model. It's not what they want to think about. They want it to disappear, like a steering wheel or an automatic door.
I use KDE at work and GNOME at home. At times it was the other way around.
I do not see any real difference. Some details are better in GNOME:
* Customization
* clicking on links in the terminal window
others in KDE:
* korganizer
* kdevelop
I regularily use tools from KDE in GNOME and vice versa.
Some new tools in KDE or GNOME are even worse than older software, i.e.
ggv can handle less complex documents then gv which can handle less
complex documents than ghostview. In fact all use the same backend (ghostscript).
Nevertheless, ggv _is_ useful and if my document doesn't load, I can still
use old ghostview.
So, I see little reason for throwing away neither KDE nor GNOME. It's the applications
what counts.
...the last great war of the third age of mankind...
At least I find it obvious that the are other types of people/users than me. Not only do they think and behave completely differently, but also like different things. Btw. since when did Linus become a usability god anyway.
Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Aboslutely. Yes, we've heard it a million times so it must be true?
I think power attracts the corruptable, and absolute power absolutely corrupts the absolutely corruptable.
Correlation != causation.
I don't think being President (or Texas Governor) made Bush a jerkwad, I think being a jerkwad is what attracted him to those posts. Being born rich helped him get there.
I don't think power has corrupted Linus, although I don't know the guy personally. What I've read doesn't lead me to believe he's a jerkwad.
It's the coolest of all the BSDs and it's where all the technological advances are being made.
I happen to agree with Torvalds 100%, I think what has happened to Gnome is simply a disaster. the more they try to "simplify" it, the more unuseable it becomes. I think that the notion that fewer features makes software more useable is a myth. If I cannot configure software to work the way I want it to, and it makes me use it in a clumsy manner in which is not intuitive to me and I cannot change it, the software gets in my way and slows me down, and I will not use it. This is what Gnome does, I cannot make it work in a manner that is useable and convenient for me, so it slows me down and gets in my way, and instead of helping me it is a worthless hindrance to me that gets in my way. Every user has a different and unique work pattern and style of using software, and unique tastes. What seems to be the perfect, most convenient set up for one user may be totally worthless for another. Features that seem "useless" for one user might be indespensable for another. Just because one person finds no use for a feature does not mean it should not be there, there are likely many other users who probably love that feature and use it all the time. It seems Gnome software tends to ram down the Gnome developers idea of what good user interface is down peoples throats by not allowing them to significantly configure the software. One of my biggest complaints is the gnome panel, you would think they would allow something as simply as allowing it to be freely floatable and resizable, but it is extraordinarily difficult to force it to do anything but behave in the rigidly programmed manner that the Gnome developers think is the best. Furthermore, for providing very little functionality and customisabily and being an absurd nuiscance, it manages to consume 30 mb of RAM. Ok, that would fine if the software actually could be configured and had lots of functionality, but it does not. I think most users, even new users, actually want a lot of functionality and features. I think that it is not features that inhibits user friendlineness, but rather it is poor layout. The key is not to provide fewer features but to provide many features, but if there is a concern that putting too many options on a configuration screen for instance, simply put the more commonly used options on the main configuration screen and the more advanced options on an advanced screen. This allows the adavanced users to be able to access the functionality that they need without overwhelming novice users. often, the way people learn software, is they will begin by learning a small subset of features then gradually expand and branch out into more complex features as they become more familiar with the software, the key is to let them do so and allow them to be able to access the full range of advanced functionality so it is there as they learn to use it. User interfaces should allow the user to jump right in and start using the software with as little learning and configuration as possible, but should allow the user to branch out and as they become more familiar with it fine tune and tweak the software to their needs and access its advanced features. Software can be new user friendly and expert friendly at the same time in fact. Software for instance could allow an option that adds all of the expert options to the user interface (an experts mode and a new user mode) for instance. I dont know where this notion that software has to be featureless and so simple only an idiot can use it came from. Even Windows often has more flexibility than Gnome or Firefox. Something is seriously wrong when windows programs provide more functionality and are eisier to use than Gnome programs that provide little functionality and are hard to use. Internet Explorer has far more customisability in my opinion in its configuration than Firefox for instance and I have found it, with its security zones and finer control over the browser to be eisier to use than Firefox. And I think this notion that all programs must have the same colour schemes and look and feel, is also simply absurd. It seems Gnome deve
Last night, I was considering switching to Gnome. I realize that it would be a lot of work to transfer my K menu over, but I was willing to do the work to try out the alternative my buddy was touting.
Your post has changed that. There are many features of KDE that I've gotten used to - features that you'd have to pry from my cold, dead hands - that, after a little investigation, I find that Gnome is simply without.
Also, consistency is important. I like my windows to all have the same feel - it keeps me from accidentally hitting the wrong button when I go for an instinctive click.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
"Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""
So that's why there are no features in gnome apps. I always wondered what the design philosophy was.
Sorry to say so, it's sad but true;
the market IS idiots 'cept me and, of course, you.
Just be thankful that Linux is rich enough to enable diversity of usage. That's a strength, not a weakness, and trying to kill a WM that makes Linux simple (perhaps too simple) is very un-linux!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages; all alike.
"If we naively believe that "the cream naturally rises to the top" with this moderation system we have to ask the question "*Whose* cream?""
We're talking "one-handed" geeks here. Use your imagination.
However, he wants people to use KDE, based solely on personal preference, which is nothing more than zealotry "Please, just tell people to use KDE". Because, you know, people shouldn't even get a choice in the matter.
Is it really so surprising that Linus has some zealous opinions concerning the operating system he originated and the tools he prefers? Personally, I think he is entitled to be as zealous or as critical as he likes.
I didn't see anything in his comment that suggested people shouldn't have a choice. On the contrary, he was complaining that the GNOME developers were removing user's choices because, in his opinion, they're too lazy or incompetent (my interpretatiom) to do the necessary coding to leave them in.
How does one get this paid rôle as a Troll? Is it like that iPod/LCD monitor 'pyramid' thing? I'm going to need money either to buy better computer parts or get a flat outside my parents' basement (where I use GNOME).
Have you read the entire discussion? Linus gave specific examples of what he considers usability "failures" in GNOME. Is that zealotry? Why don't you reflect on the points he raised instead of calling him a zealot. Who comes across as a zealot here? - read the post he answers to... Or read very carefully this post (focus on the content, not the author) - is it reasonable enought? Actually, what bothers Linus is the "usability zealotry" - whenever GNOME devs have to defend one decision or another (missing input field from file dialog, print dialog issues, spatial by default) we always here usability this and usability that, without any substantial evidence or empirical research to back it up ... just some outlandish theory. Now that is what is so annoying, that I'm not surprised in the least that Linus seems a bit vexed :) He is not known for his diplomatic skills, he never was, but as soon as his straightforward opinion does not coincide with some GNOME users, he is labeled as zealot?
I enjoy using GNOME and believe its philosophy trumps that of KDE. Most people would rather have a clean house to a cluttered one so why wouldn't people prefer a less cluttered interface? In the end, whether you notice it or not cluttered interfaces take longer to learn and generally soak up the productivity of most users - this is because of Fitt's law. People in this commentary have accused GNOME of merely following Apple's lead but I believe GNOME has proven that it is prepared to deviate from the mainstream and make the tough decisions when it needs to (e.g. the spatial navagation tool nautilus). Needless to say, I think Linus has it wrong on this one.
I heard he's 8 foot tall and that he farts thunder and pisses lightning.
==========
Error in module creativity.dll : Unable to create witty comment.
Abort / Retry / Ignore ?
I take the best from all window managers and desktops. I use gnome-terminal for my shell (I like it better than loading the bloated kbuildsycoca stuff from KDE's konsole) and it's just as easy to configure as konsole. When I need to use a file explorer gui with large thumbnails or for moving lots of different files around I use konqueror from KDE. As a base WM I use fluxbox because I can't live without tabs and being able to create tabbed windows. It's fast, easy, and as "elegant as vim/gvim" once you learn how to use it.
What allows me to easily have the most bleeding edge versions installed on my system without thinking about dependencies? Gentoo.
My small multi-tasking PC is able to boot from a network, install from a network change from box to box over ssh using hot keys, perform tasks in the background on other consoles and other boxes, ssh from command line to other boxes using pre-configured keys and shortcuts, transfer my other boxes screens to my one pc accessable by shortcut keys, run QT remotely, do c++ programing over the network using fetched screens, boot and install my other boxes from a boot server with them pre-configured the way I want, has custom boot screens and graphics and custom graphics for gui, has exactly what I need installed, allows me to experiment with kerberos authentication etc, change menus, make and install my own rpms, keep my own rpm stash along with all system rpms, includes raid for the system servers and file servers, allows bootable O/S manufacturing / experiments, has fine-tuned kernels, and lots more besides that. It also does the normal stuff you would expect, but it does not crash unless I tell it to do so. The box I work on has a small hdd and gets runs just abouteverything encrypted over a fast network. Most of this I learned after delving inside KDE and further. KDE allows me to use the ergonomics of the M$ GUI(which I think is well designed) but gives a lot more flexability to the level I can change the KDE GUI to match myown needs. It is great for QT wich rocks me! Although I was introduced to enlightenment before KDE I feel KDE has a subtle edge over others in it's approach to usability and it still holds on to the flexability that all flavours are renound for. KDE has introduced me to a more productive enviroment without having to worry about many of the smaller cumbersome problems I have found in others, it is an ideal learning and production enviroment which I am happy to keep using with the view that one day I may manage to contribute something to the project in order to try and pay back a portion of what I have very much enjoyed learning by adopting what I think is a very flexible system indeed. I have been using KDE for abot three years now and shall keep doing so. I find Gnome to be a bit of a strange experience altogether and get quickly frustrated by my inhability to fully access the 'power' tools I require. It does what I want from a front end and more. To sum it up it compliments Linux, KDE ROCKS!
Each and everyone one of you take a breather right now.
There is no proof that Linus actually posted that. After having read a number of posts, articles, and general comments of Linus's that have ALL been signed with encryption keys, I doubt Mr. Torvald's was the actual poster of this nonsense which simply has "Linus" at the end of the flame. Why would he even care enough to waste time posting deflamatory crap? Also, last thing I read from him was that he was going away for a week and when he's back he'll close up kernel 2.6.15 and release it. Is 2.6.15 released? No. it's still sitting at 2.6.15-rc5.
Listen to common sense. Chances are, Linus did not post that ridiculous flamebate and yet the gnome developers seem to be responding to it seriously.
- Vlad Blanton
p.s. hell, you don't even have proof that I wrote this!
Why are people still whining about KDE vs. Gnome? I found the ultimate solution to all my Linux interface issues a long time ago and I haven't had to worry about all this KDE vs. Gnome nonsense since.
This sounds like one of the guys on a UUG list I'm on, in which he said that he hates GUI config tools and much rather use CLI for configuration. I think that Linus' comment follows the same idea as this user. We want Linux to be tough and difficult so that its users are the "elite". GNOME's purpose is to bring Linux to everyone. Make it simple enough for the idiot to use it, but powerful enough for the powerusres. If we really want Linux to become mainstream, which I do, then this idea of "Linux needs to be tough" has gotta go.
.. subject ..
Linus has farted
I'm just condoning his actions.
Condoning his actions implies you agree with, and to some extent support him. Your post speaks differently.
Perhaps you mean condemning?
Oh well, I'm still mystified as to why this is either a) removing your freedom of choice, or b) zealotry. A man gives his opinion. You're free to do whatever you choose.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The commandline is usable, and extremely usable in positions where a GUI is impossible (wrong end of a slow network connection, a situation all to common in remote adminstration), but, granted, it is not particularly useful to someone working in graphics design, for instance.
Gnome has three problems all centered around how it manages its applications:
#1 All applications store their configuration data together in one place
#2 Configuration data is not human readable or editable.
#3 Configuration data is not designed to be easily read and manipulated by other UNIX tools (All Data is an XML markup format and can only be manipulated by tools which are schema aware and schema compliant)
This duplicates all of the worst design characteristics of the Windows Registry system.
The gnome design approach is deeply and fundamentally flawed.
The biggest problem with gnome is its design "decision" to copy the
Windows Registry paradigm. "decision" is in quotes because I am guessing that the Gnome designers just automatically used that type of design after being exposed to windows.
Every Gnome app is broken. Why:
Because every Gnome app must register all of its configuration and
setting information in the gnome "registration system" which is primarily
a functional copy of the worst design decision Microsoft ever made.
(Or their best one since it forces many home users to buy a new computer
every three years, cause "this one is slowing down too much")
The Windows registry system forces all application thru the same choke
point containing a data set the grows rapidly and continuously over time.
As the data set (Registry info) becomes larger and larger the speed of
access to the registry gets slower and slower, finally dragging the system to
its knees.
At this point, unless the user has professional help advising them to reformat
and re-install everything, a task which most fear deeply and reasonably
avoid, many users will go out and buy a new Windows
PC and start the same cycle all over again.
What has this to do with Gnome?
Simple. Gnome has the same problem and they got there by ignoring the
most basic design principles of UNIX put forth by the creators of UNIX in
1978 in the July/August edition of the Bell System Technical Journal.
These design principles can be summarized by one statement:
Keep It Simple Stupid.
Every book or article published about the UNIX design philosophy all say
the same thing and yet, GNOME broke those rules.
How to fix it:
Decentralize config info collections
use human readable/editable text in config files
make sure that the config data can be manipulated by traditional Unix tools
when used as filters.
Until these changes are made Gnome is a more a Windows system than a *NIX
tool.
Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeccccccchhhhhhhhhhh.
I've never run Berkely on Vi before. What does it do?
;)
Just another proletarian malcontent.
I think Torvals have the right to take a position, but telling that GNOME users are idiots, I think it's a lack of respect for Gnome users. Be more respectuous with *ALL* Linux users if you want to get more peoples using this OS... Common, a Gnome user is a Linux user...
I agree with Torvalds' comments, but I use Gnome for no better reason than I am used to it. I don't want much from my GUI - I'd probably be just as happy with fvwm - but I do use KDE apps in Gnome. It's all just point and click anyway. I don't think most users touch 1/10th of the possible customizability and functionality of whatever window manager they're using. Provided that it does work and it is stable, you use what you've grown accustomed to. All this vs. stuff is just religious quibbling.
If I had mod points, I'd do it myself. I'm no Linus expert, but it seems to me that too many people are starting to imagine him as some "software Ghandi". He's a human being, with his own (sometimes quite acerbic) moods and foibles. He also happens to be opinionated. Wow, what a surprise! In my own unimportant opinion, I don't think it's ego so much as him having a "here's what I think, like it or not" attitude. Ultimately, isn't this better than a popular figure who refuses to take a stand or voice an opinion on anything, in an attempt to please everyone?
Last time I looked, KDE was the preferred option under SuSE. When did this change? version 9.2?
Here's a case in point. When I was providing Windows support for end-users a few years back, I'd been using Windows 95 and NT4 for about a year myself. I'd explored the various ways to create an application shortcut and decided that the most efficient way to do it was to open find your EXE in Explorer, then right click and drag the shortcut to wherever you wanted it and select "Create Shortcut Here". Why on earth anyone would use the stupid wizard interface is beyond me. So when it came time to show users how to create shortcuts for folders, or documents on their desktop, I assumed that they would agree. IN general, they did. But here's what shocked me. There was another support guy who worked with me who chose to actually use the idiot wizard! Why?! And since he'd been showing the users how to use the wizard when I wasn't around the users were getting confused. In many cases they thought that we were teaching them separate things and started creating shortcuts multiple times using each method. I confronted him on it and he said he didn't even KNOW that you could create a shortcut using my method. WTF!!!??? How do you do support for people without knowing every way to do something? It was at that point that I made the decision that having more than one way to do something for most users is a HORRIBLE idea.
Yes there are different working styles and there should be ways to accomodate them. But... when you are dealing with basic end-users who don't know the difference between the monitor and the computer, you really need to have just one way to do things. What's really needed for ANY UI is a way to restrict users to only one way of doing things until you can say for sure that they've progressed to a level where they can do things in more than one way and actually "get it".
Normally I agree with Linus on a lot of what he has to say, but I can't agree on the KDE issue. I think all the UIs on *nix are kind of screwed right now because they won't cooperate with each other well. Even though many of the Gnome people have come out saying that they don't make changes because "users are stupid" I have to say that users can be quite stupid indeed. We all know that. The solution is to have multiple experience levels (like Xine does) that would let administrators assign users to various UI user levels (that can be created by the admin) in relation to their level of knowledge. If it was established as a standard across UIs then this wouldn't be much of an issue. For the people who can handle and need to have more than one way of doing things, they can get assigned to an advanced user level. For the people who need to be told to switch on their monitors lest they think their PC is off, they can be assigned to the neanderthal user level. Etc...
Enlightenment is the only UI I've seen for *nix that actually looks and feels "right". It's just a shame that KDE and Gnome don't want to play nice and let their apps run without needing to load those stupid and unneccessary services... For my general comments on UIs, see here.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
"The interface designers at Gnome really read too much into thier title - they want to change the way you interface with the computer (see spatial browsing for a classic example of the reasoning) instead of assisting you to interface on your own terms."
Damn Xerox Parc! Always redefining the interface to my computer, instead of just working on the CLI.
As a side note, the bouncing pointer #*(@) in KDE really bugs the hell out of me. Of course, most of my Linux systems are servers set for runlevel 3, so honestly, I don't care what it came with.
That'll teach'em not to put the OK/Save button on the right-hand side of the dialog box!
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I have both installed, use GNOME for my WM and still use a few of the KDE apps. I just hate having a cluttered interface. If that makes me an "interface nazi," fine. I hate clutter. On my subnote, I run blackbox. Both KDE and GNOME would be massive overkill bordering on the unusable with such limited screen real estate. You'd think Linus, of all people, would recognize the utility of using the bits and pieces of different things that work, instead of finding one all-encompassing platform and discarding anything that doesn't have the brand label... Blah.
What really is the difference of Gnome and KDE? They both try to emulate windows, have a "start" button, etc. I personally think they are bloated (KDE more so) but prefer the true simplicity of blackbox.
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&wo rd1=gnome&word2=kde
We got Linus on our side! Pbbbttthhh!!!
Best of all though, I don't have to switch to it, which makes it ROCK many many many times more! Poor Gnomes...
:-]
Your premises are correct, but your conclusions are faulty. The GUI interface is not the hard part of Linux. If it were, there wouldn't be so many idiots who manage to use Windows.
The hard part of Linux is setting up a multiuser system for just one person. It's still much easier to set up mail, printers etc. in Windows than in Linux. Various distributions are making progress in this area, so that's good. But trying to make the GUI simpler is just a distraction.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Linus is definately not your average Linux user. In fact I'm surprised he uses any GUI at all! I personally think Gnome (Ubuntu too) is the way to go to encourage Windows users to make the switch. Its just clean and easy to use and it appears to be the general consensus for most of the big distributions. KDE has its place though, and I don't think anyone is an idiot to choose either.
I've been using Gnome (on FC and Ubuntu on my personal, business, and client systems) and KDE (on SuSE systems at the college where I teach) pretty much every day for years. I know the keybindings, the shortcuts, and the configuration options for both, and I'm including coverage of both in a book I'm writing. I personally prefer Gnome (gasp! - a longtime *nix user, a competent programmer, an experienced sysadmin that ... prefers Gnome!) but that's by a small margin.
But as I've been writing the book, I've realized that both include some pretty hoary crud from a user perspective. (Before I get flamed: yes, of course FC uses a heavily themed version of both desktops, but don't skip the line above where I noted that I also use Ubuntu and SuSE).
Take KDE's configuration system, for example -- you can get to the configuration module for, say, the Window Manager in several different ways (through the Control Center, or a right-click on titlebar), but the user interface is very slightly different depending on how you get there (butons vs. tabs? different numbers of options on the buttons and tabs?) -- why?! What purpose does this serve other than confusing the user? People criticize Gnome's [various versions of] load/save dialogs, but KDE's use of a horizontally-scrolling display of variable-width columns brings new meaning to the phrase 'user hostile' (and copying it from a braindead Windows design is no defense). What about configuration options that have proliferated to the point of absurdity? - such as window focus options that include "focus follows mouse", "focus under mouse", and "focus strictly under mouse" (when the differences are not documented except in some obscure post on a developer's list)??!?
Gnome is no better. Why can I drag'n'drop a wallpaper or a desktop theme onto the appropriate configuration dialog, but not a GDM theme? When I successfully install a new personal font using the fonts:/// location in Nautilus, why doesn't the new font show up in that Fonts window??!?
Both desktops have significant shortcomings. The features and shortcomings of each will rub us in different ways. But without friendly competition between the two camps -- thankfully, augmented by cooperation through freedesktop.org -- I think the free desktop would not be anywhere close to where it is now.
So long live diversity, choice, and friendly competition!
I started on SUSE 9.3 about six months ago and then shifted to OpenSUSE 10.0 and I've tried both KDE and GNOME and ended up on KDE. This happened for a couple of reasons;
* I clicked with KDE quicker.
* 60% of the programs I use are KDE.
* I can still have the programs from GNOME. I just have GNOME as an alternative desktop. Not used, but there.
Another possible alternative is that it was easier to pick up after Windows or some freaky cultural sex thing. IANApsychologist.
From my point of view though I still need GNOME because if it happens in a years time that KDE has gone to the dogs, I want some choice, someway to vote. An "alternative".
I would prefer if distributions used both, I have the disk space, I get bored, I like parts of both of them.
Of course, I'm not Torvalds (thank the intelligent designer). I haven't chosen to speak normally over a medium where people can't see my body language or hear my tone.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
Linus has a great quality, he is pragmatic, anytime he try to use the best tools for his needs. Do not forget that when the folks of bitkeeper changed their minds, giving up the support for the kernel's sources, Linus designed git in less than one week. ookoi
You keep using that word... i do not think it means what you think it means...
Linux never represented Linux (users) as a whole. Only dorks thought so.
Wake up people he's a person not a PR-machine or a Messiah. If he has opinions that are not the same as yours it doesn't make him a lesser person, and if you as Linux users can't accept differing opinons you need to grow up.
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
I, for one, welcome our new overlord Torvalds... wait... doh! He just gave his opinion, probably more for people wanting to try Linux than people already using it. He's just saying, "I find this one easier, make sure to try it and not think that Gnome is Linux." I, personally agree with him (though I like Fluxbox even more) but I've been handing out Ubuntu discs left and right and recently permanently switched one of my friends. He's perfectly content with Ubuntu and Gnome.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
While Torvalis is a kernel guru and has much respect, I'm not sure he is qualified to advise me on subjective matters such as the gui I use (unless there is a problem from his kernel) or any other preferences. I don't care what his politics are , what kind of car he drives, or what his favorite movie is. I do want his input on linux kernels.
...about the Gnome vs KDE flame war is that you don't talk about the Gnome vs KDE flame war!
My life is an open book ... up to a point.
hahaha lololol
Linus is absolutly right about Gnome being dominated by 'interface nazis', but thats also exactly the reason why I like Gnome. As oposed to most other OpenSource software Gnome isn't build by stacking layers of layers of hacks on top each other, but instead Gnome developers often take a step back and redo stuff the right way, not just the way people got used to. Sure thats always causing a lot of flameswars and discussion, but its also a necessary thing if you want to end up with something that is actually a good interface and not just one which you have getting used to. So, yep, switching from Gnome1.4 to Gnome2, from Sawfish to Metacity, from old filedialog to new and soon from Galeon to Epiphany was quite painfull at times, but at the end of the day, I got almost all features back that I need and a whole lot of useless stuff cleaned up.
Of course it might be nice if some of the new stuff would be introduces a bit more gently and probally more backward compatible, at least for the time when the new stuff isn't 100% ready for prime time, but the stuff that gets done is almost always worth doing. Oh well, and I would like if they would finally drop Nautilus and use something that isn't just broken-by-design, but maybe that will happen one day anyway...
Those that want all the bells and whistles and configurability should simply use KDE, which really looks and feels for most part like a standard Windows interface on steroids, for me however all that configurabilty is simply useless most of the time, I prefer something that 'works at default' and doesn't offload the creation of a usable interface to the user.
I prefer WindowMaker and the GNUstep applications and libraries as my DE.
I must say that Linus is right on this one. It's about time someone publically called GNOME what it is... a pile of junk.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I can just see him and Andrew Morton chanting "The kernel's not done till GNOME won't run" ...
All of this because he's complaining about his mouse's buttons? Use the keyboard, you n00b.
I don't think that word means what you think it means
I am trolling
I use it because it just works.... Haven't I heard that somewhere else before ;P
My thoughts exactly - powerusers like Linus and me (ahem) prefer kde, those needing more hand holding use gnome, and absolute mental basket cases that need animated paper clips to help them type a memo should either use Windows or be packing boxes in the warehouse.
Unfortunately (I didn't read the article for all the nuances) Linus comes off sounding like an Interface Nazi in declaring "Use KDE" and calling the gnome folks interface nazis, and should promote the world of choice. But that psychology comes with the territory (cf Gates' or Jobs' demeanor) I guess (lots of mental stress). Folks who need more hand holding need a dictator, as they're unable to make the best choices so of course Gnome devs look like fascists, whereas Windows folks need an entire church and the PC Pope.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Whether or not what Linus has to say is relevant, here is least is the other side of the coin. Read here. Make up your own minds about what is useful and helps you stay productive. But for the record, I prefer GNOME and my parents prefer KDE. Figure that one out.
Softare development, mainly. It's what puts food on my table and also what I do for fun.
Nice to see someone pointing out the real news :)
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
No. I won't do it.
You're just trying to make Linus look bad.
Shame on you for trying to bite the hand that feeds.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Two comments I'd like to make:
1. If people want to customize something, usually it's because they want it to resemble another thing they like already (*cough* Windows explorer *cough*).
2. I don't care if whatever GUI is designed to work for "dummies", "idiots", "stupids" or "Joes sixpacks". I only want to be able to click on a freaking checkbox to disable the annoying animations or whatever.
If it has it, I'm fine with it.
Gnome just doesn't suck anymore :-)
:-/
GNOME. It just doesn't suck anymore
Artifical Intelligience is no match for natural stupidity.
Kind of reminds me of when Reagan quipped during a mic test, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
It's one thing to shoot your mouth off if you're Joe Sixpack, another if you're POTUS. But Americans do love leaders who talk like Joe Sixpack.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I personally think that your considered best part about Linux/Open Source is it's biggest downfall as well. There's so many things to choose from, and there's loads of incompatibility across the environments. So, now, you're stuck with KDE/GNOME/E cliques, and nobody's bothering to try to work towards a simpler, more common standard. This is a big turnoff to most normal people that I try to convince to use Linux. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to have to futz with finding a specific installer, or any of that. They want what Microsoft did - simple, click to install software. No need to hunt down this or that, nor need to have a specific environment installed for the program.
Yea, I'm gonna get modded troll or flamebait for this, but tell me, if Linux really wishes to catch up to Windows, you'd think that getting an nVidia card working under Linux (WITH 3D Acceleration) would have to be just as easy as it is in Windows - double-click, hit next a couple of times, then reboot. (In Linux's case, the reboot of course isn't necessary.) But sadly, Linux still has not gotten this far. If Linux is going to become desktop mainstream, there needs to be the ease of use that even Ubuntu still has yet to deliver - click and it's done. I'm surprised that so far, nobody has seemed to come up with a simple way of doing this.
And if anyone could answer my thoughts, please give a better reply than the Linux communities that I tried getting support/help from. I got tired of this "holier than thou and smarter than thou" attitude these people take when I try to get a simple question answered. Being that rude, and that snotty, is a surefire way to turn most normal people off to even thinking about using Linux.
And before you go "Not everyone in the community is like that" I've encountered this problem everywhere except the Ubuntu forums. IRC, other forums, even PERSONAL EMAIL all I get are crap attitudes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have to admit, I'm not entirely sure why people are so wedded to the One True WM mentality. There are many ways of working with computers, and people have many different interests in using them. Even more, neophytes will have different interests, will bring different skill-sets to the party, and will tolerate different learning curves.
My own preference is wmii (wmii.de), which does away with the whole premise of WIMP interfaces. I find that WIMP orientations get in the way more often than not (though there are important exceptions). Eye candy is great and all---I love me some enlightenment e17---but I'd rather just get my work done, and for me that means that the WM should get out of the way, there should be no ``desktop", and I should rarely be using my mouse. If you're down with that, go check out wmii; if not, then, well, you're a blasphemer and a heretic and you are totally teh suxors. . . .
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
Where the 'Human Interface Guidelines' for Windows for a start?
Might want to take a look at this hall of shame or maybe that one. Note while laughing to your heart's content that upwards of 90% of the problems reported are for the windows platform...
Would have been a way better world had there been such a thing as interface nazis for windows...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
No he shouldn't. Read what he actually said. His complaints are just as valid of OS X as of Gnome. He should use KDE or some other infinitely tweakable Linux desktop.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Has anybody thought of the fact that Linus might just be... wrong?
-Weilding blasphemy with the power of anonymity!
All I want to know is how do I make the new Gnome file dialog let me traverse directories that start with a dot. I recently was forced to switch to evolution for email and have since been forced to make symbolic links to all my dot-directories in order to make use of them.
Is there a better way?
*sigh* back to work...
If you want to type or paste a whole path though, you have to press ^L first. Let somebody guess that if they can.
I have to agree with Linus here, gnome looks nicest and I use it, but I hate it.
It makes it too hard or impossible to do some things, and is simple to the point of idiocy.
KDE looks kack on the other hand and is a dog to program in with its compiler compiler; so I won't touch it.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
"Well I believe I'll vote for a third party candidate." - crowd member
"Go ahead, throw your vote away." - Kodos
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
I really do agree with this guy.
\
Any of us can write an email to an obscure list and not have it plastered all over slashdot. Linus can't because he did all of us a massive favor.
Sorry Linus.
Maybe this will be regarded as blamebait, but I find the reverse is true when reading the Gnome APIs. These tend to be confusing, bloated and poorly documented. While the KDE documentation is better, it's not perfect either, but it sure is more consistent.
So advise the Gnome team to let the usability people look at the API first.
what makes you think you only have 2 options?
both sucks.
At work I always have a well configured windows desktop (and with a bunch of terminals to linux boxes and unixutils installed)
my choice in linux is to use ION.
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/
How can you talk about usability and still force the user, dumb or not, to waste time arranging windows on the screen? screw this!
If you use those WM, then you're not contributing to nothing. Open source is nice because it can change and explore new ways of doing things. If you just want to copy what's already there... then i think it's time i change the ribbon on my site to SUPPORT fucking software patents after all.
God, you have an inflated sense of self-worth. Let me fill you in on a little secret: knowing how to survive by hunting/gathering on the savannah, build a house, or build a car from scratch are much more "elite" skills than being able to write papers about long-term effects of Charles VIII's invasion of Italy in 1494 or even the ability to write your own window manager.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
I use GNOME on Ubuntu, but I just recently installed KDE (apt-get install kbuntu-desktop) and I must say, while KDE still suffers from ugly icons and themes, it's quite robust, more snappy (on my machine, anyway), and feels more finished than GNOME.
I hadn't used KDE in a number of years, but was quite surprised.
When I say 8 percent I don't mean people with 4-year degrees, I mean people in the world lucky enough to pick what kind of sftware they can use. There are plenty of non-degree holders who get to be that picky. But yeah, 8 percent is a total guess as to that figure.
Eh.
I bought a Mac.
Now I don't worry about it anymore.
See ya folks, I got work to do.
[morons]
Is a "desktop" really a requirement? Why must people talk about "kde the window manager", "kde the application manager", and "kde the too many tools" as one thing?
/task/ manager. Window managers not being able to tell which things are related may or may not be a failure of the X protocol.
/need/ eachother. What they _all_ need however, is some set of standards. A Standard place and format for themes, for menus, for tasks to declare themselves, for drag & drop accross multiple unrelated applications, for configuration.
This really is an actual question.
Why are all these elements smashed together in one grand thing called "kde"? (or gnome)
There are many components, none of which should rely on any of eachother:
- A window manager. The thing which Windows users JustDontGet, and which seems increasingly difficult to find without including features which are not directly related to the task of managing windows. (even the next one should be seperate). A window manager should not be a
- A Task manager. For launching/killing applications, and perhaps somehow tied in to the applications themselves. I know it's difficult to seperate this completely from a WM. I just wish it seemed like people were trying. Often a menuing system. Often a nod to microsoft.
- A desktop. Some people like these, I don't, but I have no problem with you liking them. A desktop is a program that takes up the whole screen and can, through one way or another, have things placed on it.
- A file browser. Please stop combining these with desktops. And web browsers. And photo albums. And text editors. And configuration managers. And task managers. and Window managers. And FTP clients.
- Common Dialogs (see previous rant in same topic)
- A configuration manager. A configuration manager should manage configurations. It should not be the only way to manage configurations. I hesitate to lean one way or another as to whether or not options dialogs in individual applications should be able to tie in to these.
- A theming system. No component should rely on a theming system, no theming system should assume the existence of any component
All this ranting is merely meant to point out that none of these things inheirently
And of course, because I tend to get modded as troll when I don't explicitely say this: The preceding contained opinions. Lots of them. They are intended to promote discussion, not flames.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I will treat your first sentence as a legitimate question asked in the spirit of honest enqiry.
Basically, no. While being fast and effective are attributes of good usability, they are hardly the only ones (well, "effective" is such a generic word it's possible to turn that into anything.) Other factors include ease of learning how to use it, and ease of remembering how to use it after you've been away from it for a while, and suitability for the tasks.
Here's something that I hope should make the light bulb click on for you, since once you really get this, it should make you a better technologist:
It's not really hard to make a system that is FAST, but is poor in other areas. For example, a CLI can be FAST and suitable for a wide range of task, but is piss poor when it comes to learnability and ease of remembering after a while.
Likewise, it is not hard to make a system that is easy to learn, but is poor and inflexible, like a really stupidly designed wizard.
The WRONG way of thinking is to consider the two as tradeoffs. "If you want fast, you MUST give up on other areas" is bullshit.
The RIGHT way of thinking is that "good design is where I can gain in one area without losing in another." Yes, usability design is HARD. It requires THOUGHT, PROTOTYPING, and (here's the real kicker): TESTING ON ACTUAL USERS.
When I read Linus' emails I was struck by the irony and egalitarianisms.
Here is an OSS software authority who makes decisions about what users get, whether they like it or not, being on the receiving end of that same kind of thing.
I think that is beautiful, with no offense to Linus, or making a judgment about Gnome's goals.
I'm sure if Bill Gates wanted something in Windows, he would get it.
I think Linus is the better for knowing (rightfully or wrongfully) how that feels.
How do we even know that this really is Linus Torvalds to begin with? An email to a mailing list could EASILY be spoofed. And just to throw in my oppinion, I'm a programmer and "Linux Power User", if I really wanted balls to the wall configurability, I just drop down to a terminal. For every single other instance in the universe Gnome works, works well, and is not cluttered by crap I might use once every 10,000 years. It does have some short comings, but they appear to be getting addressed so I frankly don't give a crap what this guy says. And now I can't wait for the next scheduled release.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
I don't know how the gnome save dialog ended up like that; it looks kack and is too hard to use.
Some kind gnome contributor had to tell me about the secret ^L keystroke so I could paste a path into a file dialog. WTH?
I like the outlook save dialog (not the new office save dialogs).
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
KDE due to some bug in Qt cannot simultaneously be set to display both simplified and traditional chinese characters at the same time. This means anyone living in Taiwan or Hong Kong doing business with the mainland is going to have problems.
So I have no choice but to use gnome.
If there is actually a fix for this someone for the love of god post it.
I read the cause of the bug before and it seemed pretty basic but I am not a programmer so I can't fix it and any KDE devs I tried to talk to it about didn't give a shit about China or Chinese people. (I guess people only care when they want to sell something to the Chinese!)
Linus is nearly irrelevant. A from-scratch kernel could be implemented in two years or less. It would leave out cruft, incorporate higher-level technologies (filesystems, process scheduling, memory access), and move forward with respect to massive scalability and parallel processing.
It could be pulled off by any number of companies or by a group. "Open Source" as a movement would suffer, because there would be fewer left to wave the flag, but then there would be more tiny flags. I kind of like that idea, actually.
Kidding - SCO would just take over.I never realized Linus could say such stupid crap, I thought that was reserved for Richard Stallman. I thought the whole point of Linux was choice?
- oZ
// i am here.
Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
QT designer for GUI development
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
I have only tried each a few times, but Gnome is a much more 'classy' (i.e., feels better) than KDE. Just have a look at Ubuntu vs Kubuntu with the default configuration. The former is warm and enjoyable to use, the latter, in my experience, cluttered and buggy. Maybe it's just Kubuntu that sucks, and if you install a standalone KDE works great, but I won't bet on it.
Since I switched to KDE (a month ago), my wife has actually been asking me if I'll put Linux on the desktop she uses, replacing XP
that says something...
My tech blog
Torvalds Nails GNOME hE3D to the wall!. announcer: headshot!!! TORVALDS: I 0WNZ GNOMERZ.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
I hate to say it, but I'm with the Gnomes on this one.
If it is the Gnome team's goal to have people who are not computer enthusiasts, just computer users, use Gnome then making things simple is the rational way to go.
A power user like Linus Torvalds can take care of himself.
Ordinary users who aren't interested in computers, who just want to use them, will be turned off by making things unnecessarily complex.
When is a desktop unnecessarily complex? When another existing desktop can get the same job done without forcing the user to learn or do more.
This posted snippet is just part of the stuff that Linus said. You can read some more of this interesting thread here: The Linux Attitude
If you use Ctrl+L to bring up the "type your filename" entry you can type in dot-names and enter them that way. As long as we're dissing on Gnome, the fact that there is *no way whatsoever* to discover the Ctrl+L shortcut is a massive weakness.
Screw Torvalds, his kernel and his opinions. There are far more better operating systems out there, such as BSD and Darwin(and OSX). Fluxbox + Openbox + XFCE + FVWM > KDE + GNOME
Per Aspera Ad Astra.
I don't know... for my money, it just doesn't get any better than the flamewar on the mailing list. Nothing like Linus calling Gnomers "interface nazis" and Nat calling KDE'ers "feature sluts (who never saw a checkbox they didn't love)".
Hilarious... I love these guys - that was a great laugh for the day.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
I agree with the philosophy that is wrong to clutter an interface with every possible option.
It intimidates ordinary people and drives them away. It also irritates power users who do not use those options all of the time, but who have to step around them when they put in an "all of the time location".
For example, I love the KDE, but I never saw why it was necessary to have the option to add a device on my context menu for my mouse. That is something I do once in a blue moon. The context menu is for things people do all of the time.
Is there a happy medium? Can power user options be exposed and easy, while at the same time keeping them out of everyone's face on a day to day level?
(choose one)
Kids these days.
Young whippersnappers.
Has anyone stopped and though about this? Outside of the stale 1337 POV?
Are we going to accept that we WANT our grandparents to switch to Linux? For security, or to break the "evil" toe-hold of MS. If so it HAS TO HAVE THE GNOME VIEW. No one outside of us sadomasochistic geeks want a complicated computer, and to tell the truth I am getting sick of needless complexity (sure it should be there, but HIDDEN). And its not like Gnome is dumbing down Linux itself, it still allows term access, thus all of our arcane and 1337 complexity is a CLI away.
99% of people don't want to have to think about what their computer does, or what their OS is doing. They don't want a layer of transperency between the OS and the GUI. OS equals all of the nasty and dangerous guts, it has a large tag "here there be monsters". The GUI should, in their eyes, hide this.
If you want to be uber, fine, use KDE or don't bother with X. But to say to tell people not to because it is simple is absurd. Yes, I will be moderated as troll for disagreeing with the holy Linus. People want simple. People like simple. Everyday I pray to got that computing moves towards greater simplicity. Remember, though, simplicity DOES NOT mean less power, it just means that there is a guidline to hide the possibility of that (confusing) power deeper within the GUI interface.
I really wish the Linux GUI crowd would invent something like OS X (sitting on its nice BSD core), simple, functional, elegant. But it seems that the GUI side of OSS windows manager development is mildly retarded, or unable to accept that people like K.I.S.S. And more so (for you KDE designers) people want something they can look at all day.
Not geeks, people. Mod down at will.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
And what, pray tell, has OSDL done to deserve my trust or respect?
Better yet, can you tell me that their "Desktop Linux Working Group" doesn't invision a better, brighter future... A future where a single linux desktop named KDE reigns?
I'm sorry, but I've probably done more for GNOME and free software in my free time than half of the members on OSDL company roster.
I trust that neither OSDL or Linus have an objective opinion on the desktop... They just want their working group to succeed, leading to more money and less desktop competition in the future.
Well I'd agree with him but I like Gnome so I found anoher solution. I simply had a lobotomy so now the desktop seems "at my level" again.
Seems to me that the idea of the Gnome desktop is to reduce it to a single button which pops up a "hello world" message. Click, drool and repeat.
Frameworks, DCOP, KParts, KWallet, some integration between stuff like Kopete/Kaddressbook/Kalendar/KMail, etc..
Granted, GNOME projects tend to have better support (OO vs. KOffice, Firefox vs. Konqueror) but as an environment KDE is richer and closer to the holistic OS X ideal than GNOME (which is striving for Mac OS 9).
On a Mac OS X box, the fact that the system address book, calendar, mail client, chat client, passwords, web client, etc. are all integrated (if email address is in system addressbook, do not junk filter, if im username is in addressbook, add to ichat) is wonderful and simple. You enter info once in a canonical location (addressbook), and everything else uses that. KDE is going there. Apple's iStuff is also integrated pretty well, and I can imagine KDE getting there before GNOME thanks to KDE's preference for frameworks (another *Step/OS X thing).
In the end, this may seem like developer candy, but the applications (and their ease of use) that result from these development methods can be much more user friendly... If only...
Both KDE and Gnome are bloated. The only difference is KDE is a suckier piece of trash.
If you haven't tried a leaner, meaner environment, I suggest xfce
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Ah yes, here comes the Slashdot clergy to interpret the word of their god!
...find that all of the linux desktop solutions leave a lot to be desired. I find KDE to be buggy and to contain way too much eye-candy for my preferences. I like gnome, because it is stable, but find it to be hard to configure, and I also find it to be sorta...ugly. I like XFCE...but it is wayyy to spartan for my tastes...but it sure does run fast. What I think we need is a unified UNIX desktop environment...sort of a base standard...that people can build around.
I've lost a great deal of respect for Linus at this point. After all these years of having relatively good arguments and being a mature leader, he comes out with this FUD? I think his status has finally gone to his head.
I use gnome at work, because *it works*. I don't need Linus sitting there telling me that I shouldn't use what I like, any more than I should be sitting there picking apart the many faults of KDE.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Nice
... for the software tips coming from Linus "you should use bitkeeper" Torvards!
If I use KDE it's because it fits my need! Not because i'm against any other desktop environment. And every user should have the same opportunity to try and choose. Because that's freedom!
RIP Slashdot. I used to love you. dead account - but slashdot wont let me delete it.
Exactly what are Linus' credentials when it comes to user interface design?
Linus' opinion on user interface design matters only slightly more than his opinion Minnesota high school sports.
I am primarily a Windows user, but I do prefer KDE when I use Linux. However, I see no reason to bash Gnome for, well, aren't they doing exactly what Firefox did?
And for nitpickers: With the subject for this post I was referring to two different ways to do GUIS - KDE vs. Gnome/Firefox :) If I am correct in assuming that Gnome is in fact going the "Firefox way", of course, which could be completely wrong :P
Clever signature text goes here.
I'll never be a good geek but it's not from lack of trying. I just terminally suck at CLI (forgive the pun). So I've grown to love Konqueror as a file manager; Gnome doesn't have anything to match it for functionality. In KDE I turn off bouncing cursors, zooming icons, animations of all types, and it loads in about 3 seconds on my very average machine.
The teacooker is my guilty pleasure. God I love that thing! Without it my coffee will brew for an hour because I get so focused on whatever I'm doing that I forget all about it. Different strokes and all...
ehh wait... Is this thread about World of Warcraft?
English is not this
Say what you will about Gnome. The only way I could get my open source drivers Epson 84 to print under Kubuntu in Cups was the Gnome cups manager. I am thankful for that.
/usr/libs just keeps growing and growing and growing.
I do use KDE. That Java isn't totally open source and QT wasn't totally open source arguements were not enough to get me to use Gnome or do the purist Debain java workarounds. You have to trust some businesses to do the right thing - as I did and do Opera, KDE and Sun Java.
However, KDE throws way way too much stuff on a standard install. I was pleased that the new iteration is quicker than the previous. They still throw too much stuff on. It is not like kernel modules. If I do not have a scanner presently and my camera doesn't work well with any of the photo managers - why should they be automatically installed. I just use a bash script to get my photos onto the machine and then convert jpgs also into tiffs.
If I had any time to play I would go with the xubuntu which supposedly is a bit faster for my older machines.
And as for the comment that for Ubuntu Gnome is better supported than Kde - well - if Mr. Shuttleworth is running Kubuntu - I suspect that the support will be pretty equal in the near future. Although they should just drop Kynaptic and just go with synaptic.
In closing, KDE really needs to prune / make optional many things. And I get tired of always having to go back and install more GTK Gnome libraries for apps.
peace, mark
... funny, I just got in trouble with my wife for saying she would buy a remix CD of Madonna farting in the bathtub. This was in response to her buying both the whole CD and the remix CD for the first single of Madonna's newest release.
Hey, this would make a great new Slashdot Meme:
Yeah, but I bet you also bought the remix of Madonna farting in the bathtub!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When I bought my PowerBook, I took a little time to learn the MacOSX interface so I could be as fast with it as I was with my KDE desktop. It wasn't that difficult:
*M -> minimize a window (the only bad part of you have to click it to get it back)
*H -> Hide the app (can be clicked back to or *TABed to)
*TAB -> Goes between apps (interferes with the only good multi-desktop tool I've found, so I never use multidesktops).
*` and *~ -> Walk between windows of the same app.
*W and *Q -> Close windown or close app, respectively.
Plus I have a quick show-all windows and show-desktop Expose setup in the 2 bottom corners.
The file dialogs rule. When you drag them out to fill the screen (instead of being a little patch in the middle), they remember it. You can have them in the column mode (*3) so that you can quickly whip around, and you can DnD shortcut dirs to the side bar just like in KDE. It's awesome.
The only thing I hate is that I can't switch to focus follows pointer (not as big a deal on the smaller screen of the laptop, but I'd be very angry about it on a desktop), and the fact that sometimes my current window loses focus when something else starts to whine about something is annoying. Nothing should ever steal my focus.
The X11 support in MacOSX is pretty shoddy, too. I simply don't use apps if they require X11, because they integrate poorly with the system, and don't follow the interface standards that the normal Carbon and Cocoa apps do.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
No he flamebaited them pure and simple, now he will duck out of the way and all the monkey boys will want to start throwing turds at each other; but before they can do that, they are going to have to pull their heads out of their asses before they can reach any good turds! Gnome has been making a lot of "useability" changes that a lot of us feel are counter productive. Linux needs a heavy weight desktop with all the bells and whistles, KDE is very good there, a light weight desktop and there are several good one for this fringe element, and it needs a mid-weight desktop and this is where gnome belongs. Unfortunatly when gnome changes, a lot of applications get dragged along kicking and screaming, that is one of the reasons that cinepaint is converting from GTK to FLTK, wouldn't it be ironic if Gimp decided to follow suit?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Okay, love Linux... LOVE IT! Been using Linux since I installed Slackware off of 3.5" floppies. Had to drop it professionally for a few years when I was in the corporate Windows-is-ubiquitous world. Came back to it three years ago with REL2.1 and SLES 8 as platforms for IBM Websphere.
This year I'm a crazy Ubuntu person (my work laptop runs Hoary/5.04 for business and pleasure).
Now, Linus is god of the kernel and if he says one processing model is better than the other, then I'll listen. BUT, Linus has never shown himself to be an expert at UI nor do I think he should be passing off idiot vs. expert judgements about users.
Computers should be as easy to use as toasters whether you're an idiot or a savant. Windows ain't there. Macs are pretty close. KDE has always felt like it was trying very very very hard to be Windows and instead making for just as cluttered a mess. Gnome is easy, simple and gets what you need done. For me (and I am a UI designer with an HCI background) Gnome is to Linux/BSDs Desktop application what Tivo is to Linux Media Center application.
Does Gnome need more work, sure it does. But the framework and methodology lend themselves towards simplification rather than confusions and obfuscation.
my 2 cents,
cheers,
Levendis47
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
People have used the strawman of "it's stupid to have 2 DEs" in the past. We're really starting to see the effects of having 2 DEs now -- once they reached maturity, they started to develop quite differently.
I'm going to toss my hat in behind this statement from Linus also: "Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection thing, never mind that it's a million times slower."
Every time I have to use The Gimp, I hate that fucking GTK file dialog. It's a piece of shit. If you're going to make a dialog that's hard to use and annoying as default, the least you can do is make it stateful so that when I expand it and change it so I can see my file names, those choices are remembered for next time. Apple gets it right: if you change a file dialog in an app, that will be remembered forever.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
But command line porn sucks!
"I wasn't using my civil rights anyway...."
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
I imagine most Slashdot readers are traditional power users, so I'm not surprised people want lots and lots of things to configure and tweak. I'm a little saddened that so many posters don't understand where Gnome and Metacity are coming from, and why there might be problems with lots and lots of configuration knobs.
Typical users don't configure things. Your typical user might tweak a few really simple settings like their desktop background, but they're never going to touch the "Wireframe or opaque resize" checkbox. Heck, I have problems convincing people with LCD monitors try switching from simple greyscale antialiasing to subpixel antialiasing (ClearType) to see if they like it. Most love it when they see it, but they're so scared by the fairly technical configuration that they don't want to mess with it. Ultimately adding lots and lots of things to tweak means your probably spending lots of time trying to satisfy a very small percentage of computer users. If you're trying to satisfy the mass market (and Gnome is), that may not be a good use of your time.
More options means more bugs. Every time you add an option, you need to debug it. And you need to debug its interactions with all of your other options. More options means slower development time to ensure correct interaction between all of the options. To just pull two examples that have irritated me, Metacity is a pretty small piece of code for a window manager, and it still had really annoying redraw bugs in the "low resource mode" (wireframe mode). The wiki backend MoinMoin has a number of options to control how it displays pages for logged in users. I fiddled with them and somehow found just the right combination that caused it occasionally fail to close links. I banged my head against it for an hour or so trying to create a test case to submit as a bug, but couldn't craft one. I ended up giving up and turning off one of my configuration changes.
Designers are supposed to make decisions, not shrug and ask the user. Sometimes there is reasonable debate on an option. Sometimes different use cases need different options. But all too often an option is added because a designer either doesn't know what to do, or is trying to support some unreasonable user. Some options are simply bad. For example, windowshading (a form of minimizing that keeps the title bar visible but hides the rest of the window) is pretty much dead. While may make sense for some specialized uses, as a general solution for desktop windows it's a failure. Yet more than one window manager drags around an old "double click title bar to windowshade?" option.
It is, of course, possible to go too far. Gnome pushes very far in the simplification direction and they've made mistakes. Just one example, Metacity's author fought against wireframe resize and move for a long time, claiming, "But computers are so fast now." Not such a good argument for an operating system famous for working great on older computers. Definately a bad argument for a window manager designed to be small and fast. It's finally been added as a hidden option (something like "low resource mode").
Search 2010 Gen Con events
The elite class has always been educated, so not really. Now if all you know is how to write papers you may have some trouble amassing wealth and leveraging power against the working class, but the educated elite have always used such education to survive much more comfortably and healthily then the workers (until they get a little too comfortable and it is obvious, then the workers kill them and create openings fora new elite.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
GNOME, KDE users sign historic peace agreement
/for more of these see http://web.archive.org/web/20020803000601/www.segf ault.org/stories/
It appears that for now, the flamewar between fans of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments for Linux has come to an end, as both President Clinton and Linus Torvalds were on hand for the signing of the historic Madison Accord. The GNOME vs. KDE flamewar has already claimed casualties in the tens of thousands, and at times, threatened to destroy popular geek websites, such as Slashdot, entirely.
"Today is an historic day," Clinton said as he addressed the geek media. "From this time forward, it is my hope that KDE supporters and GNOME supporters can settle their differences in a civil and humane manner. I pray that we can now begin a time of healing and reconciliation in the Linux community."
The accord, which was the culmination of over two months of intense negotiations, was finally signed in the aftermath of some of the bloodiest GNOME-KDE violence seen thus far. At last week's LinuxWorld Expo in San Jose, a band of GNOME extremists open-fired on a KDE demonstration booth, killing five and injuring several dozen. And last month, a member of the "Sons of K" terrorist organization suicide-bombed Red Hat's corporate headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. (Red Hat has long been known as a leading sponsor of GNOME development.)
Both KDE and GNOME fans were optimistic that the accord would lead to a lasting peace. "KDE is a lousy desktop with an inconsistent look and feel, and borrows way too much from the Windows interface," said GNOME and Enlightenment enthusiast PiXeld00d. "However, no one is forcing anyone to use it, and as long as major distributions such as Red Hat and Debian refuse to make it their default interface, I see no reason to instigate further violence."
"Let's face it, KDE is the most advanced, user-friendly desktop available for X11," said KDE user N0-f33r. "GNOME is only just out of beta after all this time, looks like crap, and comes nowhere near the number of features that KDE has. I can give my mom a KDE-based desktop and she'd know what to do. She'd be lost with GNOME. But you know what, since GNOME sucks so bad, no one's going to use it anyway, so there's nothing to worry about. I should probably go call of my network of hired assassins now."
Representatives from both KDE and GNOME factions resolved to unite against their common enemy: WindowMaker.
"I have no idea what this is all about," said Linus Torvalds, who uses FVWM. "I came for the free herring."
I prefer KDE because tasks are more easily automated, plus I rather like the integration of applications - yes, even integration of the web browser into the environment. Because there is no ActiveX, no VB Script, and Javascript is more properly sandboxed in Konqueror in comparison to MSIE, I can have nice convenient integration without the security risks such integration presents in MSIE. Also some call KDE bloated - it's simply full-featured. I still run dual Pentium II boxes, single Pentium II boxes, and even dual Celerons and KDE runs just fine on them. Just don't run all the eye candy and don't have 3,291 applications in the notification area (read: System Tray) and the system will be perfectly responsive. I never throw out old machines until the board or CPU dies because they're still very usable for day-to-day tasks, or even as lightweight *nix (Linux or BSD) servers.
Gnome? Some claim it's a more corporate look, but with offices accepting Windows XP and with folks running the god-awful "lilac" or "valentine" themes on older Windows versions in corporate environments, KDE's default skins are by no means gaudy. Heck, I would argue that KDE is better than Gnome out of the box for corporate use, because Gnome's out-of-the-box themes are downright drab, while KDE is colorful but at the same time fairly reserved (out of the box), with the default colors (SuSE in particular) being less prone to promoting eyestrain. Heck, the window decorations in SuSE's default skin (plastik) are very, very similar to Windows XP's default Luna theme that corporations have embraced en masse.
I know, I know, both KDE/kwin and Gnome/GDE can be skinned however you like, but really, how many corporations are going to put time into skinning the desktop for internal use?
I'm not saying that KDE is perfect by any means, but every time I read some rant about how evil KDE is, in that same post I read rants about how great that user's tweaked/hacked/skinned Gnome desktop environment is. Uh, bait and switch there. How about an apples-to-apples comparison?
I used to abhor KDE with a passion and much preferred Gnome, but KDE has come a long way, especially since 3.0.
Also:
For what it's worth: I've sat newbies (who are familiar with Mac or Windowsdown in front of KDE (both Mandriva and SuSE out-of-the-box skins) and Gnome (likewise out of the box skins). When I sit them down in front of KDE all I need to do is tell them "you have writer instead of Word, and Konqueror or Firefox instead of Internet Explorer or Safari" and they're good to go - in each case they've found their way around everything else they've needed.
Not so with Gnome/GDE. I have to handhold them too much for a desktop which many claim to be "easier" than KDE.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
He demonstrates a lack of understanding of human factors design principles. More particularly, he demonstrates a lack of understanding that there ARE such design principles. Linux better get its
act together if it wants to remain a serious contender going forward.
I've switched to OSX because I respect good design and also I have serious work to do with my
computer. I don't have time to spend endless time configuring half-completed core applications
on my machine, or outguessing those open-source developers who are allergic to English, or
are allergic to manual writing, or are autistic so they don't understand the ways in which other
people (yes, even smart people) don't think exactly the same way they do and don't know exactly
what they know.
One of my design mottos is "The Default shall be good." I guess I know which political faction that
puts me in in Linus's view. Weird arcane non-default options should in some cases be possible to
get to, but on no account should their presentation complexify the presented simplicity of the
core concepts of the application. Simplicity with adequate functionality is by FAR the most difficult
design goal. Why do you think Apple is succeeding these days. They're not perfect designers,
but at least they realize it's a very important issue. Calling interface designers names sounds
like jealousy to me.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This article is very misleading. While the comments attributed to Mr. Torvalds are accurate, the context is not. If you go back to the discussion and read the post from Till, you can see that the complaint deal specifically with the printing dialog in not just Gnome, but also firefox and others.
I would be curious as to what browser Mr. Torvalds tells people to use, since Firefox/Mozilla also must suffer from the same philosophy he supposedly is complaining about with Gnome. Of course this assumes that a) he truly is complaining (not something tongue-in-cheek) and b) it truly is Linus Torvalds who posted the message.
Finally, the responses to the posting are most interesting. I particularly like the one that comments that Gnome isn't being designed for dumb users. It goes on that it is designed for smart users, but not necessarily those that are computer techie.
Anyway, the real discussion was on trying to improve the print dialogs of Gnome and some other apps. This slashdot article makes it sound like a GUI discussion/war.
I have always used KDE from the moment I began to use linux however, many older (25+) system administators who use linux on a daily basis I have found are very strongly supporting GNOME. Why? I personally have no idea. I perfer KDE since I mainly am a desktop user and perfer is eye candy interface over the boring GNOME one but as for functionality, I still perfer the KDE interface as its menus are very customizable.
Bryan
A lot of the issues with stability (and performance) with earlier KDE versions had mostly to do with the really wretched C++ implementation in older versions of GCC. This has been improved by several orders of magnitude on recent versions of the compiler. If you remember SIGSEGV messages whenever you blinked at the wrong moment or applications taking 30 seconds to launch, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much better KDE is on a modern system.
- I am aware of no functionality difference. Since I am assured that there is some difference, it must be in functionality I neither know nor care about.
- I don't know why there has to be a gnome version and a kde version of every application. Like the gnome and kde versions of ghostview, neither one of which improves on the original ghostview in any way I've found.
- The only difference I've found, and it's a trivial one, is that the gnome desktop looks good, and the kde desktop looks like crap. So I guess gnome has better artists. Like most Linux users, I take a lot of crap from my friends who use Windows, and when they see how amateurish kde looks, I hear about it.
I'd be interested if anyone wants to take pity on me and summarize a few differences between gnome and kde that I should care about.Whatever happened to the obvious compromise between power and ease of use? I refer of course to the practise of having a button somewhere around the bottom right of the dialogue with "Advanced >>" written on it.
You can have all the common options for dummies in the standard view, and all the geeky stuff for Slashdot readers and Linus available at the press of a button. Gnome really is being silly on this issue. KDE and Windows both do this a lot, so it's not like they can have not though of it.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
At the risk of this criticism sounding cliche, Linus is thinking like a developer instead of an end user. The vast majority of end users neither need nor want a desktop environment that is infinitely configurable. They want an interface that's simple, intuitive, and largely the same from one desktop to the next. What's more, wanting that sort of interface doesn't automatically qualify you as an "idiot", as Linus seems to suggest. I say all this with the full recognition that there exists a small subset of power users (of which I'm probably one) which does benefit from extra features and configurability. The challenge to an interface designer, then, is how to satisfy both groups. I'm not convinced that simplicity and intuitiveness must be sacrificed in order to satisfy power users. Linus seems to want to throw the baby out with the bath.
I use gnome, and I've also used KDE. However, my disappointment with gnome (FC4) comes when I try using nautilus to mount an SMB share (via the network neighborhood-type browser). The gnome-vfs-daemon will chew through any available memory, nothing will happen, and within a matter of minutes, your machine will be rendered unusable. After looking at bugzilla, it appears that this kind of bug has been reported before- in 2004, and still hasn't been fixed. Making things "just work" is a great objective, but with gnome, it's not quite a reality yet.
I would add KOrganizer to the list. It's nice having good, complete calendar/scheduling software while waiting on Sunbird or whatever the Mozilla organization eventually craps out (and I mean that in a good sense).
Also, re: Konqueror, it's great as a Linux file manager, but I personally avoid it for web browsing and I don't support it on websites I develop. Why? The rendering engine sucks, and therefore I would have to write an inordinate number of workarounds. And writing those workarounds aren't worth it, as an extremely small percentage of hits to my sites come from Konqueror.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
As great as Linux is, the desktop pretty much speaks for itself that the inventor considered UI designers to be Nazis!
What I want to know, is between GNOME and KDE, what would Brian Boitano do!
Only idiots will use [your software].
So that's why Microsoft's market share is so large.
I was wondering about that.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
but some are more equal.
Thus spake Linus:
To my untrained ears, that sounds an awful lot like he's saying that Gnome is broken, particularly when he says that he uses something else for these reasons. Those aren't the words of someone who sounds like they're interested in fixing the situation, but rather like they've rejected the idea altogether and moved on to greener pastures.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
...but I always recommend people just use OS X.
I've used both Gnome and KDE. Gnome is nice and simple--and rips off Mac OS X left and right--and KDE is very configurable, but rips off Windows left and right.
The thing I really hate about KDE is that while they're trying to be as integrated as OS X with their applications--PIM, Office, etc.--nothing feels finished. It all sort of works, and most of it is there, but there's always one piece missing you really needed, or a preferences dialog that's not quite there yet. It looks pretty, but underneath it feels klunky.
Take this opinion with a grain of salt. I don't feel the need to spend hours tweaking my UI to have this or that pretty look and feel, or make sure that this key does this, or this app is on the toolbar. That's what I love about OS X: it just all works logically. Sure, I had to learn a new keystroke or two, but being able to drag almost anything (including the titlebar of my open Word document) onto the mail app and have it create a new mail message and automatically attach to it is the kind of UI functionality I look for. That's real UI design.
Alright so, it's a little plain with the vanilla install. But you can move around the menubars, make them transparent, change the background etc. You can add more menus and menubars. You can have none. You can change nautilus to browser mode if you like. I personally like the "just my folders and files" thingy. I see where I want to go quicker. You can modify the terminal all over the place. You can have tabs etc. Gnome's got some nice themes too.
:P)
I think a clean interface is a good thing. I stopped using backgrounds a while ago in favour of plain colour. I get less distracted, so I now actually work.
And for all the hacker-esque secret options you have gconf-editor (or the source code
So where the problem? What exactly is missing?
Hahaha great post.
On the other hand, this is a mildly-retarded "hey, great post" post, so mod me overrated.
You forgot the most important one for us programmers: Kate It's the best text editor I've ever used.
ewhat edo eyou expect efrom eopen esource eweirdos eeh? eno ebig ecommercial ecompany ewould eever estart ethe ename eof eits eproducts ewith ea eletter.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
While there should definately be effort put into making something simpler for new users to use, it should NOT ever be used as an excuse to remove functionality beneficial to those who have more experience.
Three words - Metacity edge flipping (or more appropriately, the lack thereof). Edge flipping is an incredibly popular feature with experienced users, and while I agree that it should be off by default because it can be confusing, that is NOT an excuse to turn the window manager into crippleware by completely removing that feature. (The only other options are to give up some UI consistency with the rest of Gnome by using xfwm4 and possibly introducing significant compatibility issues such as by using sawfish. Another option was brightside, but it was always a hack designed to work around missing functionality in Metacity that should be there.)
Sadly, my favorite IM client Gaim has also given in to the crippleware mentality... Numerous features are not only hidden or off by default in Gaim 2 (which I could completely understand), but they have been completely removed.
I still use GNOME for now - I'm still angry with the KDE developers' cavalier attitude towards the GPL (remember, KDE was not legal until TrollTech changed the Qt license - the KDE developers could have acknowledged the problem and fixed it by adding an exception for Qt to their license, which I believe is allowed by the GPL if all contributors consent to it, but instead they chose to ignore the issue for over a year.), plus I think GNOME looks better for now. Unfortunately, I may need to change soon because GNOME has been becoming less and less useful to me as the years have gone by.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Try this, from Firefox:
File -> OpenFile,
Now type '/etc/fstab'
You get a dialog with '/etc/tc/fstab'
If you are a beginner typist, the inteface may work.
Type '/' (look), type 'e' (look), type 'f' (look)
But this is very painful if you can type at all.
My conclusion is that this interface was designed by and for beginner typists.
Trovalds farted again.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
This is an old trick from Rhetorics 101. He does not really care what others use.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Only about 1 in 1000 people who start martial arts earn a black belt that's 0.1% and since most people don't even try martial arts it having a black belt far more "elite" than a 4 year degree right? Wow, I didn't relealize how l33t I really was!
I've used both, as well, and of KDE and GNOME, KDE is definitely more similar to the MS-Windows GUI.
This is *not* something to recommend KDE.
I fucking despise the MS-Windows GUI. For me, it sucks ducks. It's inconsistent, overly-complex, and somehow limiting at the same time. There are some definite issues with GNOME, that's true. However, since stripping things down during the early days of 2.x, the GNOME team has been slowly adding functionality and power back in. I personally like their approach.
But, excluding rants about how much I hate that C++ abomination, that's really all.
Besides, these days, I use E17. But I'm all about the eye-candy.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I'm just emulating Linus. ;) But really, I think history will prove my words right, and they can't really be fightin words if they're merely factual, can they?
I agree Perl is an "interesting" language. However, I think the "developed by a linguist and modelled after human languages" claim is way overrated. Larry may (be|have been) a linguist, and he may have attempted to model it after human languages, but frankly I think he did a pretty poor job. If the claim were true, it would be rather an amazing coincidence that the syntax and some of the semantics of Perl just happen to bear such a close similarity to shell scripting languages -- were those also developed by linguists and modelled after human languages?
Do you think that the "modelling after human languages" thing was a success? For example, can you show that large numbers of casual programmers (e.g. physics students, etc.) find Perl easier to use than other languages? From what I've seen, Perl is one of the worst languages in that respect -- casual programmers have a much easier time with languages like Basic and Javascript, despite their not having been designed by linguists. If being "modelled after human languages" doesn't make the language easier for ordinary humans to grasp, what does it actually mean?
The truth is that Perl has a few fairly trivial features that provide some flexibility not found in many other programming languages. Those features can arguably be related to features of human languages, but they're of incredibly little consequence in the bigger picture of programming language usability, and have absolutely no demonstrated benefit in terms of making the language more tractable for humans. The main use for such features seems to be to be able to say things like "Look! I can make Perl follow the sentence structure of Latin!" Pity that has no real relevance to programming.
I would hope this is not truely Linus, as is suggested by a few of the other responses in this chain. Working in the field of Human-System Integration the statements made by the poster (regardless of true identity) would be used as a prime example as to why Software Engineers/Developers/Programmers (whatever postfix you want to use) have little to no idea what they are talking about when it comes to Usability. Having a Bachelors in Computer Science, and being a Software Developer for 4 years before returning to school for HSI, I have no problem standing up on my soap box and yelling it to the world. :)
Coming from a Human-Systems Integration position, I would suggest using GNOME. Not because of some false "the users are idiots" standpoint, but because a system (any system) should work *with* the user. Design the system to work with users. Don't force the user to have to work with your design.
Half of the "joy" many Linux users seem to get out of using the OS is the cumbersome protocols required to accomplish many tasks. This is all well and good for people who want to get their hands dirty, but not for Joe Everyuser. If Linux is to "break out" into the mainstream, it will not be with KDE on the desktop.
I'm a KDE fan and I use most of those applications.
However, I can't claim K3b is the best CD burning because as of now, it does not support burning CDs when the data comes from a network/remote machine.
I think that's a very basic limitation, I was burning CDs over the network on Win95 (non-OSR).
I hope this gets fixed...
Check this out:
:-)
QuickView - DOS Multimedia Viewer including DivX, AVI, MPEG, MOV and MP3
It works quite well in an OS/2 VDM, also.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
KDE and Gnome are both bloated behemoths whose aim is to
crush humanity by their girth.
I had always liked gnome, but they refuse to get the file manager / selector (something every app. uses) down to something that does not make me want to pull out my hair. And what good is a sound daemon / manager if every other program that wants to play sounds has not been made aware that the "sound traffic cop" only wants certain programs that were invited to the party to be able to play sounds. ESD = BAD.
KDE takes longer to start up than my old 2 cycle weed eater on a cold day.
I personally settled on XFCE and filerunner.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
...just ignore that other AC. He has nothing relevant, creative, or particularly informative to bring to this discussion. Please ignore him.
With that said, Gnome is for losers. Have a nice day.
because I remember reading in one of his interviews that he used gnome.
I don't think it was that long ago. Maybe less than a year
Answer not a single one of them unless your very lucky.
The "big" ones get their power from being customizable and the install you just done usually has the most basic of 'skins' wich means you are barely tapping into its full power. Worse you will usually have come from a different desktop (the number of first time PC users who choose a linux desktop can be safely ignored I think but lets not start a flamewar on that shall we?) and you will want to use your old knowledge instinctivly and be "upset".
For instance I like to have virtual desktops so I have the web on 1, irc on 2, work on 3 and 4 etc. HOWEVER the simple act of changing between these virtual desktops is handled diffrently on each gui. XFCE for instance supports the mousewheel and CTRL-F1. Other gui's require you to click a button or some other combo. Simple differences but annoying to get used to. This can often make a "new" desktop seem more of hazzle then it is and lead you to not use it again and simply go back to the old desktop.
Or am I the only opera user who constantly tries to use mouse moves in IE/firefox? It is not that I hate firefox but I just can't get the mouse moves to work fast enough before I give up and just install opera.
So people get "used" to their desktop, frustated when they try another and you got the makings of a nice holy war. A post above had people argue that KDE was for geeks and Gnome for casual users while the next post argueed the exact opposite.
So the real secret to finding the best desktop? Is not to install and give it a wirl but to "force" youreselve to use the desktop until you have become familiar with it and stop thinking, Oh why don't they just do it like my old desktop. Only then can you truly judge wether the different way KDE or Gnome does things is right for you. Amazing advice eh? That properly reviewing a product takes a lot of time. Must be why proper consumer reviews do not test if a car door open and closes but what happens if you open and close it 100.000 times.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Then why did he say:
Really, why is it impossible to take him at face value? The man said that he doesn't like Gnome, he lists his reasons for not liking it, and says that he encourages people not to use it. Is it really necessary to second-guess him and interpret the possible meanings of every single word?
Linus is not a Zen koan (to the best of my knowledge). In fact, his reputation is of speaking his mind and not mincing words.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"There might be an option to turn this off in the system registry but it also turns off other features. For example a window now turns into a wireframe when you drag it."
I guess you missed that.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You are Emmanuel Goldstein, and I want my five pounds.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
And about apps, if well im sold to KDE since years ago, know about and use some apps that are very related to gnome, like gnumeric, gaim, gimp, evolution, abiword and probably a lot more good examples.
But what about what is the "desktop" itself? I still feel KDE more rounded up, more consistant, more like all work in the same way, than in gnome. And if well i undestand Torvalds critics, i feel that having that much power a group focused in improving the desktop usability is somewhat a very good point to gnome... just maybe them have to understand that power and easy to use are not 2 separate concepts, and could be a way to give both simplicity for the beginner and power for the one that want to do more.
> Also, re: Konqueror, it's great as a Linux file manager, but I personally avoid it for web browsing and I don't support it on websites I develop. Why? The rendering engine sucks, and therefore I would have to write an inordinate number of workarounds. And writing those workarounds aren't worth it, as an extremely small percentage of hits to my sites come from Konqueror.
:-/ ?!?
Konqueror is better integrated with KDE... when KOffice is 100% ready this will be more evident, but as of now it's easier to see pdfs in it (compared to Opera, for instance). Not to mention kwrite/kuickshow integration. Kuickshow integration is so good it hurts! It's excellent when you click on Google image results: immediate fullscreen-maximized vision.
Also, I work in a hostile environment (Windows). Opera (last version) and Mozilla (6-mo old) cannot render some MS-braindamaged pages. Konqueror (6-mo old) works flawlessly -- I imagine the Acid2-passing version will only fare better.
I keep wanting to simplify my life and use less than the 3 or 4 browsers I must now: Mozilla for banking, Opera because it rocks and Konqueror because of ease.
Ultimately history may repeat itself with Konqueror, the new IE, taking up most of my browsing usage.
... Linus says emacs is the one true editor and people who use vi(m) are idiots.
Could this story be anymore flamebaitish?
If anyone one of us ordinary geeks mentioned anything like what Linus did we would be modded down faster then you can say goatse.cx.
http://saveie6.com/
I dunno. Sounds to me like Gnome is following the Apple approach, and KDE is following the Windows approach to UI design. I don't think either is necessarily "better" but I know which one I prefer overall and it's actually not the same as Linus' preference.
Although I do think it's a little snobbish of him to tell people "No, pick the one I like". How about simply informing them of the differences and letting them choose what THEY like? Isn't that the whole point of free and open source software?
Random and weird software I've written.
This is not true, but I can see how you made the mistake because I thought that for a bit too. The problem is this:
~/.gtkrc-2.0 is ignored if gnome-settings-daemon is running
It seems like it shouldn't be a problem, but it confuses a lot of people who want to manually configure gtk+ simply because they don't know gnome-settings-daemon is running when they try to edit the file and assume it's no longer used.
I too use FVWM. I find both KDE and GNOME buggy and annoying, but I can't help but to try them each out for a day every time a new one is released. Mabye I'll learn eventually.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Clearly, expecting an American to learn another human language is asking a bit much.
I like Gnome. A lot. I like not having to be tied into the KDE window manager.
And you don't have to. I used to run KDE with Afterstep and WindowMaker for a long time, and they're not even compliant. And if you run it with any compliant window manager, you won't even notice the difference.
Hi. I use KDE (and kde-apps) almost exclusively. Firefox AFAIK does not use g-s-d, nor did gmplayer (but I debianized & installed kmplayer, and all is sweet now). Once in a blue moon I use the Gimp, and I'm not certain if it uses g-s-d, I will try as soon as I get home.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
- It is older & more stable
- It IS more 'Mac Like'
- You can have ALL of KDE's programs installed AND run under Gnome
- It is more secure than KDE
GNOME just works & looks better than KDE.
Torvalds Earned His Right To Comment & So Do We.
-- The InterNet is a terrible thing to waste. Arrest Bill Gates and shut down Microsoft immediately.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
I say hell yes if someone like Torvalds can step in and finally declare one of the GUI's superior. I think that the KDE vs. Gnome debate is only going to slow Linux down in the future more and more. If the teams combined then maybe we could get some of the best of both worlds, but currently progress on somethings can be too hard because you have to program for to different UI's.
After hearing this I'm going to switch to Kubuntu to support the cause, because I've always wanted just one main Linux GUI and if Linus has to be the guy to say it then I can't think of any better. That's the simplest way I can think of it.
--
Aaron Marks
90% of the people that use KDE have fallen under the stupid spell that having 20 half-arsed features is better than one feature that is both to the point and works. KDE is like having super hard shoes with a quality hatch at the bottom of the car and Gnome is like having a car with brakes.
In Gnome, when you change your desktop's appearance, it changes immediately. KDE gives you a bazillion options with a preview that is not nearly so effective. This is an enormously difficult problem to solve and Gnome did it, but KDE did not.
Similarly, Gnome's control panel for its desktop is clear and covers the basics. KDE's control panel is an unorganized bunch of slop, a bunch of directors without a script throwing things into a play, and what you see is the nauseum of what you get.
And, do I even have to mention how childish KDE is with their gay "K*" naming convention? Last time I checked, there are far more letters in the Alphabet than K. It makes the whole desktop look, well, stupid. "Konquerer" as a web browser. These guys can't even spell and they are going to "Konquer". Come on.
Losers.
The KDE team should focus on enhancing KDevelop and let the Gnome people handle the user experience.
This is my sig.
What's an "interface"? Is that like a different coloured slot for my punch-cards?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I can't claim K3b is the best CD burning because as of now, it does not support burning CDs when the data comes from a network/remote machine.
/home/JoeUser/network/school_server), so applications like K3B can access those files just as they would any local file. I think Novell will include FUSE by default in the next SUSE release, and hopefully so will Kubuntu.
Since Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) became part of the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel, any user (not just root) can mount remote directories set up under KDE. The remote directories appear fixed in the local directory tree (ie.
This is a tremendous example of good collaboration through the Free Software stack, from the kernel to the Desktop Environment, to the individual applications. It allows not only K3B to burn data coming from network/remote machine, but just about any other legacy application (shell, Motif, GTK) to do the same without being modified.
...do you realize that your hunk of ugly unreadable shit up there with no paragraph breaks reminds me a lot of the Gnome interface?
Who knew?
Everytime I load a new distro I get a nice gui and have to figure out how to configure it. Now you tell me there were actually TWO different ones? No way! don't even tell me there's more out there. I might freak out.
Amarok may be a nice lookin musicplayer, but it is a hell to get running on Debian Testing, and if you finaly have installed it, it constantly crashes (at least with me). Why should a simple player take 50% cpu when switching to the next song? I get the impression it is suffering from featuritis and the developers are not interested in putting out a stable and usable player. Eyecandy and flashy features are worth nothing if the thing crashes 5 times a day.
So amarok dev's: please develop on the current stable kde release and let regressiontests help you maintaining a stable base.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I was using gnome just because it was cuter, but I'm switching to kde right away. I always do whatever Mr. Linus TROLLvalds says.
AmaroK is the BEST music player on any system I've ever seen/used. The only thing that comes relatively close is MediaMonkey.
Too bad AmaroK is nix only, and MediaMonkey is windows only.
Anyone wanna port AmaroK to OSX86?
lol. Don't hold back, Linus, tell us what you really think!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The rendering engine sucks? Up to KDE 3.1 that was true, but it has come a long way from being a browser with a lousy rendering engine and piss-poor javascript support to being the best browser (along with Safari - konqueror got where it was thanks to Apple's contributing back to the KHTML project) out there. It and Safari pass the Acid2 test. Firefox doesn't. Opera doesn't. MSIE, of course, fails miserably. What other browser passes the Acid2 test?
I think your opinion is tarnished due to past versions of konqueror, which did indeed suck.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you weren't so busy twiddling your uber desktop we wouldn't be sitting here with dumbed down kernels trying to get sound to work as well as Windows 95 did. Let's see you make a kernel that has the gui in it, the sound subsystem in it, and have a real feature rich kernel ala Microsoft. Or, you can make the arguments about simplicity and elegance in your own work and respect that others might make the same in theirs.
This is my sig.
His complaints are just as valid of OS X as of Gnome. He should use KDE or some other infinitely tweakable Linux desktop.
My big problem with the direction Gnome has gone is that it _was_ a good tweakable desktop suitable for techies, but all the moderately advanced features have been iteratively ripped out at each new release for the past few years.
If it started off as a desktop for dummies then that'd be fine since those of us who don't want a desktop for dummies would never have started using it (just as I don't volantarilly use Windows). The problem is that you get hackers like me who have been using it for years and get pissed off when a feature they've taken for granted and used on a day to day basis is just vanished for no good reason. Having this happen once is bad enough but having it happen with more features every time you upgrade is really bad.
As it is, I got sick of stuff I use vanishing and ditched Gnome in favour of E17, which is *much* lighter, much priddier and gets rid of the silly ripped-off-Windows taskbar, taking me back towards my TWM/FVWM roots.
It's worth me pointing out that it's not the *major* features that you can't do without that they're ripping out, it's the minor stuff that just makes it easier and faster to work with.
A good example of what I don't want to see is a good feature-rich WM turning into the MS Windows WM, which lacks all the infinitely useful stuff that makes it so much easier and more efficient to use: i.e. no window shade, no sloppy focus, no ability to use partially covered windows without raising them first, no proper select+paste (I still can't get used to the horrible idea that you have to tell it to copy what you selected before you can paste it elsewhere).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It does if you mount the network share. Create a mount point (say, /mnt/cd_source) and mount the share on that point, and add the files you need from that mount point.
:)
There are almost always multiple ways to solve a problem.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yep. I'm new to linux. Just istalled Ubuntu on an old laptop a couple weeks ago (after trying about 10 other distributions) and have found it (fronted with GNOME) pretty easy to use, update and maintain, but there are some features that are missing that particularly annoy me. Mainly, the inability to drag application windows to other virtual desktops. I mean, come on, just about every Windows shell replacement (BlackBox for Win, LiteStep, etc) allows you to do this. Why not GNOME? I'm considering installing and using KDE for a while just to see how well it works. As 3.4 seems to work more like Windows' GUI (from looking at the screenshots), it might actually be a better choice for new users.
1 is the square root of all evil.
first "no": i really can't fully trust Linus when talks about something that's not the kernel. he has been long missing as a "linux *environment* leader", and judging by the mistakes and few observations he has already done i tend to agree he's basically a wonderful kernel-space hacker but in userland he has been somewhat less than effective.
.net and longhorn and yukon effort.
;-)
second "no": gnome or kde, they are both quite functional, and tend to not satisfy me. probably it's because i consider windows or os-x interfaces "not that great" and "our" desktops are maybe too heavily influenced by those interfaces.
third "no": the more i use current systems, the more i think that's not one of the top-priority problems (too bad we managed to not able to choose a single environment, by the way). i think that current guis (like most of the current technologies) are quickly aging (and do not fit to their environment) without being able to become truly "mature".
i really would like to see a *strong*, rigid standardization both at gui and programming level, with much stricter appearance and interaction for end users, and with much more interoperability and code reuse at programming level. something that ms is i.m.o. much closer to reach, with xaml/avalon and the whole
i.m.o. it's plain wrong to parse data every time we need to marshal it, and to reinvent costantly the wheel for each of the thousand programming environments available. we should try to estabilish a stable, unique, proven way to pass around data, and to recycle algorithm implementations in different environments.
once again: we are missing a true, good, "leading class". we act as a bunch of elitarian hackers, and if we continue we will be relegated in some legacy/server niche at best.
choose at most a couple of technologies:
- c and unmanaged c++ for performance-bound tasks.
- in the upper layer, a unique way to marshal data and reuse code (parrot here may help a lot)
- a preferred high-level language (my bet: ruby, or something with the same features and a more c/java like syntax?)
- a preferred default database (postgre?)
- xul/xaml style of defining interfaces
- a proven standard way of communicating structure-rich data over the networks
- a virtualization technology
and please, stop wasting our time and energy; i think that the whole kde/gnome war is unininteresting and very, very OUTDATED.
bye
> Idiots are people too.
Lies!
Couldn't agree more. When people use "complicated" WMs they say "Linux is hard to use". Yes, they're stupid, but they are people too, and this kind of people are the ones who have not yet switched to Linux and keep using other less powerful operating systems. It's not casualty that Ubuntu chose GNOME. They're trying to attract people from other OSs. Now, I agree with Linus when he says the users are stupid. Indeed, they are, but it's not the job of GNOME to educate them. Education is now a problem worldwide. We all wish people were a bit more clever and use more "complex" alternatives, but we must not forget what the actual situation is.
And yet, there's a valid debate to be had here on whether Linus actually influences policy of others, regardless of whether he wants to. I agree with you on these points: That Linus makes arguments on technical grounds, that his personality has not changed over time, and that he does not wish to be a demagogue or have much interest in influencing the opinion and policy of others.
Yet, he does.
For reasons that are mostly historical he has become a public figure, an August Personage among Open Source communities. He has real accomplishments and made real advances in both technology and mindshare for the open way of doing things. When he started to make these accomplishments, people started to take him seriously, and the more his accomplishments gained momentum, the more important his opinion became. It didn't even matter whether he personally was responsible for the Linux momentum; he was responsible for Linux. Because of this, Linus' words do affect policy, do influence people, and do influence technology.
Therefore I don't think it's wrong to have a debate about whether he should be out there opining on stuff that isn't the Linux kernel. I don't even come down on a different side of the debate than you; I think he should be allowed to speak his mind. It's a free country, even for celebrities. But we are at or nearing the point where his reckless leadership or reckless statements can cause harm to the greater community here, and it's ok for people to start saying to him, "Hey dude, maybe you shouldn't say that. Do you even know what you're talking about? Lots of people think you do." And if agrees, and if he thinks he is being reckless, he's a smart guy and maybe he'll listen.
But let's not dismiss the whole thing as an exercise in wankery. What he says really does matter to some people.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
You *can* use a different WM with KDE. Just set the KDEWM (iirc, do a grep on /usr/bin/startkde) environment variable to whatever WM it should use. Additionally, you might want to kill off kdesktop to get access to enlightenment's desktop menus.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I find it interesting that others on this board will use a nearly exact opposite of that argument in the form of "If you don't use it, it's bloat!"
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
OSS leader: "Great Wall of Prophecy, reveal to us God's will so that we may blindly obey."
(Slashdot) crowd: "Free us from thought and responsibility."
OSS leader: "We shall read things off you."
(Slashdot) crowd: "Then do them."
OSS leader: "Your words guide us."
(Slashdot) crowd: "We're dumb."
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
From a user perspective, I like them both. But I was put off when it came to development for Qt (KDE). At that time, you needed a special preprocessor, and had to write the GUI code in C++. I don't know if things have changed since then. Gtk (Gnome) lets you code in any language that can call C, including C++, Python, Scheme, etc.
OK, so let's say you succeed in your goal of making the whole world as simple as a pacifier. Then what? What do people do then? Sit on a park bench and blow bubbles with their saliva while they watch the clouds blow by?
To Quote Linus:
No.
That's not what I'm talking about at all.
When user interfaces means that something CANNOT BE DONE, it's not about
"usable design" any more. At that point, it's about UNusable design.
Any Gnome people who argue that it's about "usability" have their heads up
their asses so far that it's not funny. I've argued with them about this
before, and I know others have too, and mostly given up.
"Usability" is an issue only if you can do something at all. But if you
can't do the thing at all, it's pointless to talk about usability: the
thing is BY DEFINITION not usable if it cannot be used for a specific
task.
Then a person that claims that it's usable for something else is a FUCKING
IDIOT.
And in that FUCKING IDIOT vein:
> The majority of end-users want a simple printer dialog.
This is a great example of being a F.I.
There is no such thing as a "majority of end users" in general. For
example, maybe _I_ am in what you _claim_ to be a majority, in that I
want a simple printer dialog - because I have a simple printer, and
even simpler printer needs.
So a simple printer dialog doesn't bother me, and as such you can count me
in your "majority".
But I can guarantee you one thing: the _vast_ majority of people are part
of a specific minority when it comes to something. This is somethign that
the F.I. "interface designers" in the Gnome sense seems to continually
overlook.
For example, maybe I don't care about printers. But I _do_ care about my
mouse. If I can't control the left/middle/right button actions, I get
really upset. Again, the "majority" of people may not care, so by your
majority argument, the mouse setup should be so simple that the majority
of people can never get confused. But I _do_ care.
In other words: your "majority" argument is total and utter BULLSHIT. It
can be true for any particular feature, but it's simply not true in
general.
To put it in mathematical terms: "The Intersection of all Majorities is
the empty set", or its corollary: "The Union of even the smallest
minorities is the universal set".
It's a total logical fallacy to think that the intersection of two
majorities would still be a majority. It is pretty damn rare, in fact,
because these things are absolutely not correlated.
And the technical term for somebody who claims to do user interface design
and not understand this fact is a "FUCKING IDIOT".
And this has _nothing_ to do with "technical users". Even totally
non-technical users care about something. In fact, it might be their
printer, and having a way to set the paper type and resolution by hand.
Another way of saying this: we're _all_ "special" some way. We're damn
quirky, even the nontechnical among us.
But hey, just continue to remove all that confusing functionality from
Gnome. I don't care. I voted with my feet.
Linus
Gnuyen
Kubuntu 3.5 is so nice with lipstick style, try it, I dare you.
you forgot ktorrent you insensitive clod!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Damn straight. I agree that regardless of his preference, wording it in this manner is certainly not constructive in any way shape or form.
Comment of the year
"I'm Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as - oh! Excuse me..."
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
if you think Gnome is always simplicity you haven't seen The Debian Menu..
Analog phone systems used to have automatic squelch on the lines, and if there was a bit of whine in the background, you could whistle, and the system would interpret that as interference and squelch the line. You'd lose a bit of volume, but the distracting background noise would be gone. (What worked best was not actually a "musical" whistle, but instead a high-pitched tone through the front teeth.)
So, yes, people really did whistle to "clear the lines".
I'm using Konqueror 3.4.2 now and it still exhibits rendering issues.
Just because it passes the Acid2 test means very little to me if it can't render in a way similar to MSIE, Firefox and Opera (the three top browsers, as far as I can tell), all combined. I refuse to write a lot of special paths for Konqueror just because it passes the Acid2 test and the major browsers don't.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
"KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE)" - y billybob2 (755512) on Tuesday December 13, @11:01AM
Kylix too, iirc, billybob! There's "free" (limited capability vs. full package version, iirc, this mainly entails DB engines stuff but, don't quote me on that, see Borland's site for the details) versions of it as well...
Kylix = Borland Delphi for Linux by the by for those of you NOT familiar with it!
Delphi is an excellent (one of my favs) tools for development on Win32/Win16 (all types of apps really, from consolemode/TTY/DOS-Unix commandline session apps to gui exe types) that lets you (for the most part) easily write an app for Win32, & then quickly port it to Linux.
(Barring the diff.'s between the platforms such as DriveLetters vs. Device mounts for disks/shares etc. & other diff.'s like sockets work)
* Just something to keep in mind for your list!
APK
P.S.=> Delphi's been proven, of all places, in a competing language's trade journal "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Oct. 1997 issue (and other tests online) entitled 'Inside the VB5 compiler engine' to outrun even MSVC++ in math & strings work (BIGTIME on these 2, doubling MSVC++ in speed on both), which EVERY program does...
On the remaining 8 of 10 total tests?
Delphi tied MSVC++ (for the most part) on the other 4/8 remaining tests, losing only SLIGHTLY in graphics menthods & text box form loads, & it outright WHIPPED VB (which I like don't get me wrong) in everything except ActiveX form loads...
Another 'selling point' & reason to add it to YOUR list here... because I cannot see Kylix being 'inferior' to Delphi's showing on Win32, in the Linux world really (unless you guys know otherwise, & I'd appreciate that info. since I am more of a "Win32" guy by trade + career etc. as well as home usage for OS choices).
PLUS, Kylix was highly awarded & well-received in numerous Linux folks' estimations (see online about this, you'll find a wealth of that) in its introductory period!
Anyhow:
So, if you build for BOTH Win32 &/or Linux on KDE (via Qt)? Keep this tool in mind guys... gotta go, lunchtime's coming to an end, back to the grindstone! apk
You need to reread the article, moron. Torvalds flamed *Gnome*, not the CLI. Stop twisting people's words to fit your ignorant agenda.
I can't understand why Linus would need 6 lines, when it can be said in just 4 words:
"The Gnomelet is Thrown"
You know, both Linus and Bill must have accumulated some seriously bad karma....
Linus is stuck using Linux.
The bigger irony is that for all the billions of dollars he has accumulated, Bill has to use Windows everyday.... ouch!
The reason for that comes down purely to licensing costs. It's cheaper to develop closed-source programs for Gtk than it is for Qt (if you look purely at up-front costs and disregard code maintenance and development time) because Gtk is free, whereas if you want to develop a closed-source Qt/KDE app for distribution, you need to work out licensing with Trolltech - and their licensing costs are somewhere between high and unrealistic. I'd like to see more commercial apps for Linux based on Qt and built for KDE, but until Trolltech fixes their obscene pricing most closed-source Linux apps are going to continue to be built using Gtk.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yeah, but some offices don't want their computer desktops to look like Fisher-Price. Gnome looks more clean and professional. I don't particularly care for bouncing icons and flashy colors. *I know, you can turn off the annoying KDE crap, blah blah...*
With a subject line like that, you really should've linked here. Looks like they agree with Linus, too.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Is there a better way?
You can right-click and enable show hidden directories. (ctrl-h might work here, don't recall)
You can hit ctrl-l (lower case L) and get a text box to type in a location.
You just start typing and the text box to type in location will come up.
Since Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) became part of the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel, any user (not just root) can mount remote directories set up under KDE.
They could mostly do that already, with programs along the lines of smb4k. Wouldn't work for an arbitrary kio (fish), but the school network is most likely SMB.
Although, it's a real shame it took so long for FUSE to come out, and that separate features are conflated. Userspace applications providing the filesystem and non-root users creating mounts (in their own ~ and for their own use ONLY) are separate problems, which should've been separately solved years ago. UNIX needed some of these from the start.
And Linus puts back the acceptance of the Linux desktop another 5 years. About the only time FOSS software really evolves is when the people capable of fixing it are using it. If the majority of Linux developers flee towards KDE it's going to remain the OS of choice for developers, while proprietary systems continue to target consumers. Sorry, idiots.
Compare the attitudes of the Gnome and KDE projects towards having documented HCI guidelines.
Basically, it's about not wanting to have to put the effort into developing HCI that's both usable and powerful, because that is more effort than writing code.
That something does not render the same in other browsers as it does in MSIE does not mean the other browsers are broken; it's more likely that MSIE is broken, and as soon as MSIE 7.0 gains dominance in the Windows market, your site will break since MSIE 7.0 will render sites more closely to the way Konqueror does than to the current MSIE, especially if you are using higher-level DTDs. Microsoft knows their browser is broken and they have a lot of work to meet web standards, so if you're coding for MSIE quirks to get things to render correctly, you might find your site breaking in the near future. MSIE 7 will supposedly be detecting for the use of older quirks but if you are using a higher DTD all bets may be off.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Still Confused, whether to use GNome or KDE? Bill Gates says 'Use Windows'
One thing I've often wondered about is whether people who do more in-depth technical work with their computers ought to have a UI that's more sophisticated than that designed for "the masses". I think this is something that's too-often ignored. People design UI for the majority of people - which for the majority of people, is the right thing to do. But what about (say) a professional computer programmer? Sure, they have their own niche programs that are suited just to them, and those generally aren't too dumbed-down. But for most everything else they use the same interface as grandma uses to check her e-mail. Is that right?
I wonder sometimes if we do ourselves a disservice, by assuming that we, as developers, aren't a legitimate segment of the user base. Some of it is about the goal of the project in question - if it has to have a high degree of usability among casual users, specializing for adept computer users isn't wise. But I think there's real potential for a system that's made for "us". Something modern and thoughtfully designed, but also very flexible, so that people who know their tastes can be comfortable in it.
I think the absolute worst aspect of GUIs at this point is their poor keyboard control. Keyboard "shortcuts" help but they are very limited, and tab-navigation through fields in apps like Thunderbird is awkward at best. I'd like to see modern apps adopt a control scheme where the keyboard can be used to operate more efficiently than the mouse. Emacs has some strengths in this area - primarily the fact that it allows users to run commands by name with M-x - so if I don't remember the shortcut or the location in the menus of a command, I can M-x and tab-complete and usually find it. Then programs like PINE provide very efficient keyboard navigation through all the most-used aspects of the application. I'd really like to see this kind of control become the norm in GUI apps.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I have to second that. Amarok rules. I could careless if it was *nix only.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
hit ctrl-h? right click and say show hidden files? Works for me.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
As far as the whole KDE vs. GNOME thing, I was using KDE for the longest time because it had all those option and all the flash. But when I installed Ubuntu, started to login more often with GNOME and eventually switched compeletely to GNOME. The problem the way I see it is this. KDE seems to try to look and act like Windows - because it wants to cater to the people who switched over from Windows and doesn't want to confuse them. Windows interface though is broken if you ask most HCI people. GNOME is trying to do the right thing and follow the best HCI practices. These, at first might confuse people, but after a little getting used to they will find themselves being more productive.
The best UI(Desktop) if you ask me is Mac's OS X. It is the most consistent and the most minimalistic. Apple has invested more than anyone in their interface design and it pays off, also it show what a good interface should be. I think GNOME is closer to Mac OS X than KDE.
But on the same note I am not a UI religious fanaticl. If KDE 4.0 comes out with an imporoved look and works better and can be made more minimal I would use KDE (or whatever comes along that gets the job done faster).
For the flame war potential, he very nearly could have said "Use $build."
Does it matter though? I though real penguins never leave their shell.
there is a package called kubuntu-default-settings, that you can uninstall to take away the "kubuntu" personalizations of KDE, which would leave the "original" KDE look&feel?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I've been wondering for years why some deep-pocketed company with an agenda other than 'selling software' doesn't buy TrollTec and LGPL QT. Would that end this controversy once and for all? Probably not, but at least KDE and GNOME could compete on the merits rather than on their licenses.
.NET hype hasn't lured too many to the ultimate Windows-only lock-in).
Always thought IBM would be the natural choice, but doesn't seem to be in the cards - especially now that they've sold off their PC division. Traditional desktop-based GUI software doesn't seem to be a priority for them.
Now I think Apple ought to do it. I know Apple has their own development toolkit(s), but what they really need is application portability, not Mac-specific apps. Nobody but Apple themselves and the top tier shrink-wrappers do native Mac apps. Win/Lin/Mac QT apps with a toolkit supported (for a fee) by Apple and free for the rest of the world would be a huge boon for portable software (if
Seriously, the software model of the future's gonna be cheap or free software in support of hardware sales. And for sellers of non-windows hardware, that means availability of portable software is the key. As far as I can see, Apple's still a hardware company, and unlike IBM, their hardware's oriented toward desktop computing.
The only fly in the ointment would be a Microsoft threat to pull the plug on Office for the Mac. Now, I don't see how they could legitimately do that based on Apple giving away a software development toolkit. But you never know...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
AmaroK is too slow! Xmms is a lot faster and is stable.
I *do* use Kubuntu, but somethings are more polished in Ubuntu breezy than in Kubuntu. But I can't change my KDE experience...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
While I agree that KHTML is nice, I disagree that Acid2 is interesting.
For the lesson in set theory. What a wonderful guy!
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
You're good at throwing out buzzwords. Try talking some substance next time.
Why do we suddenly expect Linus to be the politician? What has made him so popular is his honesty. He is allowed to prefer a window manager over another. Hes allowed to have his reasons. Nobody has to give it any weight just because it comes from Linus. Decisions should be made based on the facts, and if Linus makes a good case, then perhaps you should listen.
:)
But Linus isn't the CEO of Linux Incorporated, he cannot order people to implement his personal preferences. The developers and users of Gnome will no doubt continue as they always have.
Besides, I feel for poor Linus who has every word he says discussed and analysed. Perhaps he just woke up after a bad day at the office
personally avoid it for web browsing and I don't support it on websites I develop. Why? The rendering engine sucks
I use Firefox most of the time, but whenever I find a page that it can't do, Konqueror always does. I'm grateful to it for that alone.
I tried KTorrent and was unimpressed - went back to Azureus. Same with KSirc - I much prefer XChat for IRC. Other than those two, Openoffice, and Firefox, my desktop is pure KDE.
adding my useless comment to the 100s of others.
FYI, there is a KDE version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu http://www.kubuntu.org/. They also state how "KDE is a great platform" to develop on here: http://www.kubuntu.org/announcements/kde-commitmen t.php.
... our Dear Leader's suggestions(orders?). As a GNOME user I will confess that KDE never seemed attractive to me (so obviously I am an idiot) for the simple reason that it is so bloated and so full of functionality that it brings the adverse effect to it (let's not talk about speed). Only idiots won't notice the millions of icons lying around waiting to be pressed promising a fascinating new feature that will make your fascinating life more featureless and certainly more complicated.
Unfortunately I will have to give up my dear preferences because our Dear Leader wishes to correct the error of my ways in His infinite kindness and benevolence. I promise to reform (or perish trying) and recognize my lack of imagination and "featurefullness functionality" in my everyday experience and an outragious lack of inferiority complexes enhanced by flashy icons on my screen...
Note to the moderator commissars: This is a pathetic little diatribe of a pending to be reformed soul, so move along with your benvolent work, nothing to see here...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
At different times in my life.
.07, .13 1997
Timelines were roughly:
KDE 1.0/E pre
Gnome 1.2 1999
KDE 3.0 2002
Gnome 2.x 2004
Gnome 2 KILLED me. Really awful and stunted, when it came out. I hadn't looked at KDE in about 3 years, and was very surprised at what was done - especially KIO slaves, etc. I ran my app/pen platform on OpenBSD and Debian w/ KDE 3.x, including betas.
Now, I work for the 'other side'. I have limited time to check out X front ends, but when I fire up Ubuntu, I can see where Gnome was heading when it went 2. The teams UI guidelines are minimalistic. In the early stages this meant 'crippled.'
In rough terms, I think Gnome is aiming to be the OSX to KDEs Windows. Windows is striving to be OSX, now!
Fat Chance.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/fluxbox/fluxbox -0.9.14.tar.gz
./configure
:)
tar -xzvf fluxbox-0.9.14.tar.gz
cd fluxbox-0.9.14
sudo make
sudo make install
now wasn't that easier?
good thing there is that desktop switcheroo program...
But if he did, he'd be clapping his hands. Another split in the open source movement.
didn't know torvalds was such a troll.
There are advantages to simplicity and advantages to functionality. To make functionality simple seems to be the rub. Originally I had a concern about two competing open source UIs in the face of scarce development resource. Why not combine all the resources into one effort? Having used both KDE and Gnome now, my opinion is that they both have their place.
Some irritating things about KDE should be fixed, after having told the PC what geographic region that I live in, the built in intelligence together with the external references should be able to display the correct time. When I fire up Windows, even when the PC clock was deliberately set wrong, the time gets corrected. This is basic functionality.
Hardly "Flamebait". Linus pulled the Godwin's Law card. Just because he's Linus Torvalds doesn't mean he should be treated any differently than any other idiot who throws around the word "nazi". Yeah, okay, fine, GNOME developers commit acts of genocide. Whatever.
Methinks Finland had a bit too much lead in its water supply when Linus's mother gave birth.
Meanwhile, 64% of Americans carry that same degree.
KDE definately has it's act together better than GNOME, but I still tend to use GNOME. For various reasons, projects outside the KDE/Gnome communities prefer to support Gnome in preference to KDE. For instance Mozilla, OpenOffice, Java SWT.
No comment.
Ummmm excuse me. Can you tell me the last time God incorporated a patch into the kernel? I thought not....
Torvalds all the way!
I'd better go add this to the Wikipedia entry on him before The Register finds we've left it out!
*duck*
While i see that KDE seems to have a different perspective than gnome in terms of desktop environments, I think in the long term the linux community needs to look to unify the two. I think that having two widgets toolkits, two architectures, two "worlds" on the desktop is a fundamental problem to the adoption of linux as a commonly used desktop environment ... even for people who i consider power users. Why does the same thing always need to be coded twice for gnome and then for kde? Is kwrite not identical to gedit? Does gnome settings not have many of the same tools as control center? I think that developer hours need to be used effectively by the linux community and code duplication like this should be eliminated.
I see it now..
Kernel developers..
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
I can't agree more. Degrees are definitely not a way to rate intelligence. I have a computer Engineering degree. That of course means I spent 4 years with other people working towards computer engineering degrees. If I was to choose anyone to work with me on a software project I would choose a high school freind of mine who dropped out of university in his first year. Why? because I know he is intelligent he just hated school more then I did, and the people I went to university with? well I went to university with them and I know they are pretty much useless.
Despite my disdain for the overall lack of intelligence the human race displays I must say I still estimate that over 50% of all people are smart enough to use KDE.
If you oversimply the GUI interface, then you are limiting yourself to basically two user groups: "grandma" and "the ubergeek who can drop to the shell and do it all there"
The problem is that for MANY windows users (who actually know how to use Windows), this paradigm is *useless*. They need a useful and configurable GUI that actually exposes all the options, and would be able to FIGURE IT OUT. (while "dropping to the shell and poking at config files" would probably still baffle them)
Seriously, ARTS is the reason why I don't use any KDE-based media player (except for AmaroK, which I don't use because of a nasty DB error that keeps it from building a collection). It's also the reason why no KDE application can use sound notifications. I need the device for XMMS.
KDevelop keeps krashing.
Did I mention that Kontact often segfaults when I terminate the X session?
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Huh? I use KDE every day at my job for development (C, C++, and Python), and I make a very good living at it. KDE absolutely rules, particularly Kate, Konsole, and of course Konqueror (I love being able to drag and drop files to remote computers over ssh). Gnome is just impossible, and the fact that it has such a broken architecture makes me squirm.
That was over 5 years ago, and you're still angry about it?
Always looked like MacOS to me.
Linus is nearly irrelevant. A from-scratch kernel could be implemented in two years or less.
Would that we could all have 2 years of global relevance ahead of us...
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I use KDE, I use its apps extensively. But the following statement is not true:
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
My wish is for Quanta to pay more atention to PHP. But, sadly, right now Quanta is just a mediocre tool for PHP.
However, Quanta could be a rich web develoment environment if Quanta team started paying more atention to PHP. For some reason, Quanta team seems to forget about dynamic web (PHP). Which is a shame, sa no decent PHP development enviroment exists for *nix .
Quanta might be used for PHP... but it is difficult to set up a debugger, for example.
Peace and Godspeed
Holy freaking crow. If that's really-truly the case, I'm going to dump Gnome. I'll still use some of its stuff (obviously), but KDE will be the "framework" in which it resides.
Thanks!
-Slarty
Every post I've read so far fusses about features of one, or the other, or the command line being better. Hey! Wake up! The fact that you have a choice is a GOOD THING! Let's not quip about which is better and why, let's be happy that there are choices! If MS had its way, there wouldn't be any choices.
Let me address the 'GNOME is for idiots' comments too. That's, again, not a bad thing. If you want Linux to be a viable desktop operating system for *EVERYONE*, not just wirehead geeks, then you absolutely need an idiot proof GUI for them to use. Going back to my choices-are-good thing, the pro users can CHOOSE to use whatever interface they want, because a., one exists that they like, b., one can be modified under the GPL to be one that they like, or c., one can MAKE one that they like.
Isn't that the whole point of the open source movement, choice and empowerment? That's what I thought the whole thing was about. I really don't understand the continuous bickering. It makes no sense. If you don't like something, don't use it! There are alternatives, or you can create your own!
OK. Linux would never say ANY OF THIS! HA Have you guys tried to even doubt smtp headers for a second!
I agree, more than one way is a horrible udea... ...as long as the one way is MY way...
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
The AmaroK team is working on it, last I read. It's going to be a monumental task though... the way I read it, they are stripping out UNIX-specific code slowly during their current releases, and sometime in the future they will begin actually working on porting it. I use a combination of Linux and Windows (and Solaris, but not by choice) systems, and I have to say AmaroK is one of the most impressive pieces of software that I regularly use on any of them. I don't know how well written it is, but it's beautiful.
michael greene
Whats up with all the shell faschists? What if I want to use an operating system without using touching the shell once?!? Coming from Windows, I thought KDE worked fine as long as you didn't have to do anything extraordinary -and by extraordinary I mean do something else than open windows and surf the web. I'm still don't know enought about GNOME to comment on that.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
I use KDE and I really like it, but I used to use GNOME too and it doesn't seem this piece of sh*t, it is a real good product. I think Linus should have more respect for the other people's job and try to be less egocentric, even if linux is the best kernel out there at the moment Linus doesn't always seem so correct to judge others IMHO.
And I don't think "condone" means what you want it to mean since
Why, what do you think "condone" means?
In English, it means to ignore or forgive a behavior you admit is wrong.
Many people don't know the meaning, because the prevalent idiomatic usage is "I will not condone that action". That phrase means you both disapprove of the action, and refuse to quietly ignore it when it occurs.
Therefore, since "not condone" means both "disapprove" and "not forgive", ignoramuses tend to assume that "condone" means "approve and forgive", when it really means "disapproves, but still forgives".
Could the Mac's foolish idea of only letting the user resize a window from the lower right corner, but NOT the upper right corner, NOR the lower left corner, NOR the upper left corner, NOR the top edge, NOR the bottom edge, NOR the left edge, NOR the right edge, be characterized as "elegant simplicity"? I'd characterize that as stubborn stupidity.
Due to the fact that they haven't fixed this obvious shortcoming since 1984, I'd say that the Mac user interface designers themselves are "dumbed down", if not "coked up".
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
#1 All applications store their configuration data together in one place
Wrong. GConf storage can be decentralized, and the default storage backend lays out configuration values into a corresponding file tree. If you want the data scattered over your filesystems and remote locations for that extra reliability, well, you need a custom backend.
#2 Configuration data is not human readable or editable.
Wrong. The default XML GConf backend keeps data in text files that are reasonably readable and editable (but you should take care to shutdown and restart the GConf server). Even better, you can tweak every single value using command line tools, and the effect will be immediate on the applications that care.
#3 Configuration data is not designed to be easily read and manipulated by other UNIX tools (All Data is an XML markup format and can only be manipulated by tools which are schema aware and schema compliant)
Install xsltproc from your favorite distribution and read xsltproc(1). No, it isn't schema aware, and it doesn't have to be. You'll need to learn XSLT, but that's little different from other UNIX tools which all have partially similar, but incompatible syntaxes and corresponding learning curves. A point in favor of the XML format is that transformations can be made reliably, while regex-based manipulations are easy to screw up.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
"(I still can't get used to the horrible idea that you have to tell it to copy what you selected before you can paste it elsewhere)."
You are an unmitigated moron. The INABILITY to copy and replace text under X is the single MOST annoying reason for which I would switch to it.
Of course you are 100% perfect. You never accidentally highlight anything you don't mean to copy. You always delete the offending text in the destination before copying the replacement. You never highlight a URL, switch to your browser, click the address bar, delete the current URL, switch BACK to re-copy the new URL and switch BACK to paste it, because of course, you're perfect.
A perfect moron.
I don't think that word means what you think it means
This is hilarious... four people accussing her of misunderstanding "condone", when really they don't understand it themselves. (Makes me wish Slashcode had a good option to respond to multiple posts at once, in an unobtrusive and space-conserving manner)
http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/amarok
http://blog.chris.de/archives/236-amaroK-on-MacOS- X.html
whatever doods.. twm kicks both their asses..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
For heavens sake, this was almost 10 years ago, and you still feel anger about some KDE developers (most of whom may no longer be active KDE hackers) who had the guts to just write software and worry about licenses only in the second place? This is gross, really. To think this only affected KDE1 - Qt2 already offered a GPL option - and you're now, almost 10 years since the project was founded, angry enough to _not_ use KDE.
sigh.
While a lot of KDE applications are better than their GNOME counterparts there is of course absolutely nothing stopping you from running any of the above (except the "Mark Shuttleworth" application perhaps) from within GNOME.
:)
A problem many KDE media apps had until recently was their dependency on the horrible ARTS sound server. I notice kaffeine no longer has this requirement so that's definitely a step in the right direction.
By the way, GQView kicks Kuickshow any day
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It's not your fault you're an idiot. We won't hold it against you.
How can someone actually say "linux sucks" and give a reason like "everyone codes things themselves". You my friend are a moron who feels threatened by people who are smarter than yourself. You shouldn't lash out at people for being more intelligent of just better at something than you are. Critics are people without talent, who envy people with talent.
On a side note:
Linus noticed that slashdot had posted his comments from the mailing list.
"And realize that this isn't about _my_ quirk. This is a bigger issue. Listen to some of the people who have piped up. Read slashdot (yeah, I didn't realize that this was a public mailing list or I might have been more polite. Or maybe I wouldn't have. Screw slashdot).
I wish he say what he really means.
The lesser of two evils is still evil...
"Do you think that the "modelling after human languages" thing was a success?"
c s.html
Yes, but not in the way that you are thinking. It was a success, not because it is easier or harder to learn, but because I can be more expressive in Perl than in other languages.
One of the great things that I love about Perl is that you can rearrange statements. I can say:
if($x) {
blahblahblah()
}
or I can say
blahblahblah() if $x;
In the former, I am emphasizing (to myself and other programmers after me) that the condition is more important, while in the latter I am emphasizing the action as having the importance.
Likewise, moving often-used idioms into the core language is a feature of human languages that he imported into Perl. While most programming languages would opt for several features of Perl to be libraries (like RegEx), Perl has it as a part of the syntax of the language itself. Importing the core idioms of a population into a language is something that real languages do.
Having both "if" and "unless" is a very human-language thing to do, and it makes it more obvious what you are trying to do in your program than a bunch of "if(! )"s.
The beauty of Perl is that programming in Perl is much more expressive than programming in other languages. The point is not to be "easier for noobs", but for the meaning in the program to be better conveyed to other programmers who are fluent in the language.
Having a pronoun is also very linguistic.
A more specific list of human-language features of Perl is here:
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/perl/linguisti
Engineering and the Ultimate
I'm NOT using it for a desktop OS... I have used three different versions of linux for a desktop OS for various time frames (most recently Fedora C2 for 5 months and CentOS 3.4 for 8 months)...
It is NOT consistent, the file sharing over networks with Windoze machines is not consistent and often busted.
So, as far as I am concerned it is a server OS which I use ALL the time for my personal development as well as work (creating browser based applications with perl, PostgreSQL and Apache). Until whomever can make the UI work right, it isn't worth the time wasted struggling to use it...
If you don't know what CCP is don't post back...
If we augment his quote to: "This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality is a disease." and apply it to all of technology, it's worthy of being cast in gold and framed. But arguing whether KDE or Gnome insults your intelligence less is like debating which of two rocks tastes least like a carrot. Gnome *is* the simplest, and it's also the *faster* of the two, whereas KDE promotes you from Gnome's kindergarten to KDE's first grade - at the sacrifice of a 25% hit on your system resources. Or, you can get all the way to adulthood and get drunk and laid already, with just about any other choice.
*Disclaimer* I'm talking about the desktop environments, here. As always, I have to head off the forecoming attempts to derail it into "gedit" vs "kwrite" flames by pointing out *ahead* of time that we're not talking about the applications that are associated with either desktop. If this confuses you, this conversation is over your head.
Well I do know about KDE and it blows on Fedora Core 3 both with their build and with the KDE official repos and building from source. Tends to spectacularly fail with segfaults and have segfault failure of various apps at various points. Using the default install from the DVD without updating is the most stable configuration I've found.
Gnome on the other hand rocks. Shows CDs and DVDs on insertion to the drive as well as flash memory. Doesn't make me go and force it. Interface is simple and elegant. Most things have to be done from the CLI anyhow as this IS Linux.
It's not a macho status symbol and I don't like punishing myself. If I did, I'd use Vi instead of Joe.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I use and develop QT applications under Gnome. Just because the WM was built on GTK doesn't mean it prevents QT apps from running on your system. I'm not saying you are doing this, but I see a lot of KDE evangelists taking implicit credit for everything that was developed with QT, when KDE is a layer on top of QT and a smaller list of apps actually use the KDE framework (K3B is an example). As a side note, I also run K3B under Gnome because it's simply the best GUI CD/DVD burning software there is.
Yes but 25% of Americans have such a degree, and something like 5% have a masters level degree.
The reason is that most of the world lives in abject poverty where education, if it exists at all, is extremely limited. So it should come as no surprise that only 1% of the population has such a degree, given that 80% of the population never makes it past the equivalent of 4th grade.
But then you're not competing with those guys, you're competing with the other 25% who have a degree like yours.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I have a BA in Hunting/Gathering you insensitive clod!
Can't speak for Evolution, but in GIMP (which I assume uses the same file selector), you can click in the file selection panel and then just start typing a path. As soon as you start typing, a little window with a text widget opens. You can type a path to a dotted directory there (/home/foo/.bar or whatever), and then the file selector will let you browse to it.
Ya, it sucks, but hey, it's a workaround at least.
-Stephen
Last I checked KHTML (Konqueror's rendering engine, which is also the rendering engine in Safari, which you probably get many more hits from) was the most standards compliant of the four major rendering engines.
So, yes Konqueror has almost no market share, but it's rendering engine is fairly popular, (unless mac users don't vist your site)
Work bio at MMWD
Well, I think that everybody perceives KDE as a Windows GUI replacement whereas GNOME as a Mac OS X replacement. Still, I stopped using GNOME because it's not usable anymore - I can't quickly fix various annoyances and don't have time to walk through all gconf settings and find the right one. I would rather use IceWM w/ some desktop than GNOME.
Is it just me, or does Linus sound a little whiney?
By the way, GQView kicks Kuickshow any day :)
Agreed. Have a look at Gwenview though. It's quite nice.
I use a computer to get things done. I don't use one computer, I use many. I want to be able to get things done without having to memorize 1000 obscure CLI commands or trying to use extremely poorly formatted man pages. GUIs are there to help organize data into a form that is more in tune with how human brains work. Maybe you've trained your brain to do everything by the command line, and are afraid of change or learning something new and moving to a much more convenient GUI. Maybe it gives you a sense of power to be able to do things in an environment where others wouldn't know where to start. I don't care. I just want to be able to grab the computer, and with minimal poking around, get what I want done. In that regard, KDE is far superior to GNOME. As a developer, I HATE not being able to put in useful functionality only because the interface might have too much power for a dolt of a user. I say we should make everything powerful and expect users to rise to the challenge instead of making everything dumb and limiting the powerful amongst us.
Shame on you Linus. I thought the plan was to make Linux easier to use. (The Linux desktop KDE/Gnome etc ...) is suppose to make the idiots life easier not harder.
Every idiot should be able to use a linux machine for typical everyday use. Browsing the Internet Viewing movie files etc...
I am for dumbing down the interface as long as you give me a terminal window.
The big diffrence here is "end user" or "Administrator" the administrators have to realize that not all people on this planet know what they know. The end user is ignorant in the ways of Unix.
And why can't we have both, GUI's with easy modes and advanced modes.
I have the problems when Admins need the GUI in Unix or Linux. The admins should know better. I often come accross newer or poorly trained admins that are so clueless they wouldn't know a .conf file if it smacked them in the face. I hate hearing admins say things like - Where's the GUI to setup DHCP? Or even use Webmin to add users.
Even Windows admins that have never heard of "net view", "net use" batch scripting etc..
Admins that don't take the time to learn the OS should be flipping burgers for a living. And end user well you are end users.
1% of the world population has a degree? That isn't saying much when you consider areas like third world countries, desert, arctic, and tropical areas where colleges are sparse. According to the US Census Bureau, though, the 2003 census reported an all time high of 27% of adults over 25yo having a college degree. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/a rchives/education/001863.html for the link
Where's my sock? There it is...
It kinda depends where you live. In the city, hunters and gatherers are known as bums. I'm not even sure it's technically legal to kill animals you find in the city.
Yes, but your typing is not in sync with your finger movements.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
But look what else google fight says FIGHT!
We all deep down know that is wrong.
See, when I read this, at first I was a bit appalled. Is the lead dude of my favorite operating system starting to lose it?
Then I remembered that the lead dude of my least favorite operating system throws chairs at people. And I felt much better.
That's the only reason I install any of either gnome or kde's crap. I always hate it when some "thing' or other fires up kde runtime just for a borken fucking widget.
... Standards and Practices !
A curse on both their houses.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I kept reading, and reading, hoping to see that +5 Insightful saying that he shouldn't hold back with his opinions, and that all this flaming is B.S., but it never came. This is the most pathetic slashdot discussion I've seen in a while (maybe since the New Orleans article).
An observation - the indignant "Linus has gone crazy" guys all seem to mention in passing at some point that "oh yeah I prefer GNOME". These same people criticize Linus' ability to make a clear judgement. Here's a clue for all you dumbasses - if you use one or the other, you're probably not in a good position to judge either, as your "+5 Insightful" ideas are totally coloured by your worthless opinions.
As Kylix is dead :-(, I recommend you to try www.lazarus.freepascal.org. Very mature at this moment, I'm already doing some development with Lazarus. Delphi is almost 100% compatible.
I think more thought should of went into that statement. This will turn into a big shit sandwich and Linus will have to take a bite.
The notion that simplifying your interface being an idiot attractor is true, but that's not a bad thing. Idiots are people too,
;>)
You're so right! What's more, this segment was owned exclusively by MSFT.
Until now!
OSS to the rescue!
Go, Gnome, go!
Bring all those idiots to the good side!
The rest of us will be customizing our KDE.
Cheers,
It seems to me that you're missing a point, it's not about the percentage, it's about leaving out a lot of people.
So long as it has a shortcut key to open an xterm.
Might want to take a look here: http://www.rule-project.org/article.php3?id_articl e=1
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
This is quite buggy, it doesn't even *work* on my system. While this will most likely change in the future, it doesn't mean it is a good idea to write CDs using it. Not to mention that if there is a reason for the K3B developers to decide and not allow writing CDs over the network when they could use kio slaves directly, using them over a FUSE gateway is for sure far worse.
...I use KDE... And do most of my work from the shell. I feel so lost in a void of defying the stereotype.
I love my sig.
I agree with him as far as "Linux users using Linux" goes. People that already use Linux don't need over simplicity.
c /data/symbos.cardtrp.j.html has infected one of our roadwarriors. Please check your mail carefully.
However, 90% of everything I do is simplifying something to the point that a complete and total moron can use it. If I didn't make something overly simple then I would have to explain things to the people, who are in fact overly simple.
For example, if I sent this out as an email:
SimbOS.Cardtrp.J http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/ven
I would spend three days with the following conversation ad nausium:
user: What is that SimbO thing?
me: Follow the link it will explain everything.
user: What link.
me: i re send link
user: what is that for?
me: that is the link for the information for the SimbOS threat you were asking me about.
user: oh that SimbO thing? Is it in my e-mail? Do I have it?
me: slamming my head against the monitor until i'm rushed to hospitol for the only vacation time i'm allowed.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
And the technical term for somebody who claims to do user interface design
and not understand this fact is a "FUCKING IDIOT".
Wow. I had NO CLUE Linus was so testy...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
www.gnome.org/sucks
"I remember seeing a poster in college stating that about 1% of the world's population has a four year degree."
Maybe so, but that doesn't necessarily mean that computer users want a file-select box that assumes you don't know where the file is and actively hinders you from trying to tell it.
Nor does someone's lack of a degree mean that they're likely to forget where a file is if the computer doesn't put each directory in a different place on the screen.
GNOME is getting too like Mac OS X, which is so streamlined and elegant that it's impossible to find any functionality.
I was sort of offended to hear Torvalds call Gnome an idiot-magnet, I doubt its developers intended that. I'm personally a developer that has gone so far as to write a kernel driver, so I'd hardly call myself a Linux idiot, even if I'm not some super-elite. The thing is, much of my work can be done on the command line anyway, so the GUI is of secondary importance to me. I personally use Gnome for a few reasons: - I think KDE is ugly (sorry, not trying to flamebait, just my opinion!) - I prefer GTK to QT for developing my own applications - I don't like all the bundled applications KDE includes, like KOffice and Konqueror. I much prefer choosing my own apps, like OpenOffice and Firefox, since I feel they're superior. Unfortunately, Gnome is becoming more like KDE with the inclusion of Evolution and Epiphany. Those are the two apps that take the most time to compile when I'm installing Gentoo! On the other hand, I do like some of the KDE apps like K3B. Fortunately, I can still use them, even within Gnome. There have been some changes in Gnome recently that do really annoy me. I can't understand why they removed the capability to edit menus directly, and the whole Nautilus change is hideous. Fortunately, tree view is one feature they reintroduced recently, if you know how to reenable it with gconf-editor. Perhaps end-users aren't providing enough feedback to the developers? They should have some sort of community forum to interact with their users. That might help them innovate a bit as well, instead of just copying features from Windows and OS X. Those are my two cents.
I have been using fluxbox window as my window manager and no real desktop environments under Linux for the longest time. I don't need any desktop icons of fancy animated menus. I am quite happy to continue using fluxbox to manage my terminals. Using the mouse wheel to flip virtual screens just rox!!
My wife on the other hand will not be appriciate it, if I let her start all her applications with a CLI and only use a simplified window manager like fluxbox for her work. She is used to windows world and will only work with a desktop environment that seems familiar.
I've setup both Gnome and KDE on my desktop for the last couple of years. Gnome 2.10 ticked me off with the removal of some functionality such as the ability to add a launcher into the Applications menu by right clicking. I hate this opening of a new window each time I open a folder and the fact that I can't change this behaviour easily... just bites.
Now in gnome I need to have another web-browser installed called ephiphany? I know KDE's got the same kind of thing with their own web browser... what is this, windows? Maybe I'm too short sighted to see the reasons for this, but I'd rather not carry baggage I don't need.
In Gnome 2.12 (which is still marked unstable under Gentoo BTW) I can see more reasons why I may need to get away from Gnome in the future. Why did they remove the "Open Terminal" option from the right-click on the menu in Gnome 2.12? Now I just end up creating a new folder each time I want a terminal to do something quick. There might be some obscure way to go re-configure all this to the way it was before... but I really don't have the time to dance to the Gnome tune.
I agree with most of the grievances from the Gnome users. It is unfortunate, since I thought Gnome 2.8 showed promise more than KDE. I am just going to switch my wife's default environment again to KDE and see if she has any major complaints about it. If she is happy with KDE, then I will be getting rid of the Gnome 2.12 from my desktop. It seems I am not be the only person that will be trying to run away from Gnome.
I am not saying KDE is the best thing since sliced bread. To me KDE is just starting to look like the lesser evil. That is just my two cents on this.
Got them working just sweet, many years ago. Upgraded. All gone. Never been the same since.
Recently tempted by BSD^H^H^H^Mac. Too much of a die hard though.
Got newbies using KDE. Recently tempted by KDE.
Choice is everything. Choice is nothing.
Possibly there's a couple of sysadmin rules in the above too.
The only statements Linus make that I listen to or really care about is ones concerning the kernel.[1] Everything else I temper with the knowledge that Linus like all of us have personal preferences. His prefereces are not mine. So while I might read about them I certainly don?t waste sleep over them. But thats not to say we shouldn?t question them. The Gnome Vs KDE debate has raged ever since KDE has used Qt. And for good reason. If we frame the debate slightly differently say wrt to freedom. You can see there is always going to be a clash between software having the latest functionality, usability and niceness with restrictions and the freedom of doing anything you want without restrictions. The error of choice Linus makes (his own to make) is that he wants the pragmatic solution to a problem. This is his strength in developing the kernel. It is also his weakness. If taken at a personal level there is nothing wrong with it. When you get the followers picking up their thongs and shouting in agreement and aping their leader this a problem. So say after me kiddies, You are all different! Make your own choose when it comes to desktops. Dont listen to Linus, Choose your own.
Reference
[0] Wikiquote, `Monty Python Life of Brian quotes:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Lif
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[1] The Linux Kernel Archives, `Kernel HQ the origin of everything wrt the Linux Kernel. Where it is dicussed, disseminated to death. Where Linus really is the the Messiah sometimes & a naughty boy most of the times.`:
http://www.kernel.org
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[2] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[3] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[4] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Well, there are several iTunes clones for GNOME too. Unfortunately, most of them are just as resource hungry and unstable as AmaroK
I admire this in one way, as it has been far more integrated then the GNOME VFS. BUT, on the other hand I hate them both, since they are both unaccessible from a terminal. So, I tend to just mount the network filesystems anyway... a pitty GNOME and KDE didn't use some kind of other architecture which would allow access from a terminal (FUSE like).
Well, imho the coolness of Kaffeine comes from external projects such as Xine.
That said, there are certainly a lot of really nice KDE applications. But, unfortunately, there are some really basic applications that keep annoying me. Such as KMail and its IMAP support. It crashes a lot on me, and seems to be slower than Evolution or Thunderbird. Most KMail users just tell me to use POP3 in KMail. KDE apps tend to crash more on my system than GNOME apps do. Which is rather annoying since everytime I want to give KDE a go, several apps crash and so I switch back.
And one annoying thing of both environments is that they eat _huge_ amounts of memory... At home I recently switched to IceWM -against my will- because I was running out of memory. I am doing development on this machine, and all these servers, the IDE and compilers all eat a lot of memory, so, as the desktop environment wasn't really aiding me in my work, I decided that was the most obvious part to kick out. (Which is one thing I really like about GNU/Linux, being able to kick stuff out when you want to.)
My respect for Linus just went up significantly.
He's right about this, and it's good to see that at least one person (and it just happens to be the man at the top) understands that UI simplicity to the point of feature removal is function following form.
It's also nice to see someone dogging the majority user argument. The only argument I regularly encounter that is more idiotic than the majority user argument is the 90% of users argument when discussing features (a factitious variant of the majority user argument). Unless that fabricated 10% is the same 10% every time the other 90% is made up, you'll end up with every user having a problem.
If that is their methodology, then their study was flawed, and your argument is highly specious. They might better remember how to tell you how they did the task, because they're communicating with you in words and they communicated with the computer in words. However, the people who used the GUI might still be faster at the task, or even remembering how to complete it, than the command line people were they sitting at the computer, because they would be able to use their somatic memory.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm with Linus on this one, I use KDE because I CAN tweak things, to quote Einstein: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
You never catch me alive
Call me shallow, but I prefer to use GNOME merely because of the fact that I prefer the look and feel of it and GTK apps.
Like many KDE supporters, I too believe that KDE is more feature rich and has incorporated some applications that are vastly superior to their GNOME equivalents (when present) and that Qt is more robust than GTK.
Be that as it may, at the end of the day I want to sit down in front of something that feels comfortable. I don't get sick of looking at GNOME or my GTK apps, which is a frequent problem that I've encountered with KDE (it's a good thing there are so many themes, because I'm compelled to change mine every couple of weeks).
Bash GNOME for being too simple, but I'm just glad it doesn't get in my way and knows how to look pretty.
And the best example, GTK 2 file dialog. It's been turned into a crippled piece of un-usable garbage, that no longer accepts keyboard input (unless you know the secret shortcut key that they don't tell anyone), and they actually had to add seperate "Open Location" functions (which hardly work) to the Gnome software, because even if you do use the special super secret shortcut key, you can't type in a URL anymore.
(and of course, Open Location crashes regularly in Linux, and 100% of the time in Windows)
Good job, Gnome!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I'd say: who the hell cares? I don't care about this stupid GNOME-vs-KDE war that's artificially being kept alive by Slashdot. I use KDE apps in GNOME and vice-versa.
Bill? Is that you?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Here's something that I hope should make the light bulb click on for you, since once you really get this, it should make you a better technologist:
Some light bulbs turn on with the click of a switch, others with the turn of a knob, and still others with the pull of a string. Interestingly enough people find all the above methods to illuminate their environment usable.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I find it very weird that Linus is moaning about lack of features or missing configuration now and didn't around 2.0-2.4 releases (or did i miss the flamefest back then). Anyay, back then GNOME was missing lots of nice features that had not been written (or ported from 1.x) Every release especially since 2.6 has been adding all the missing features in a sensible and usable way (IMHO of course) Anyway for me for all the bitching on both sides of the linux desktop divide both desktops seem to be diverging at least in terms of goals, not toolkits etc :)
The GNOME team's commitment to interaction design is laudable. Where they may be going wrong is that they may not have a realistic picture of who their users are. That's a fundamental principle of interaction design. "Linux geeks" is a very unique user group from an HCI standpoint. They will jump through endless hoops, and even engineer novel solutions, in order to get just exactly the functionality that they want. They will be frustrated by any system that does not allow them to interact with the computer that way. I think Linus counts as a linux geek. The general public is quite different. The GNOME project has to decide if they are designing for the general public (ie. to replace Windows on the desktop, for children in third-world countries, etc..) or for linux geeks. I think it is fair to say that you can't do both with a single design. If they want to design for the general public, that's fine, but then they have to realize that they are going to lose linux geeks.
By "called them back" I meant all of them where called back to the location of the study and were presented with the same interface as before and where asked to repeat the tasks but were not told how to to them again. The ones that use CLI had a better recall rate. And you explained pretty much why - because humans learn leanguage and words well and faster than they will learn to recognize and remember the vizual appearance of the icons+the behaviors.
I don't think I completely got your point.
However: if you practice martial arts you get a black belt afer doing so for 3 to 4 years. Some rare exceptions need longer, because they dont make their examinations or simply learn slower.
After 10 years you definitely have one, or your dojo simply sucks.
EVERYONE practicing gets a black belt, not only special gifted or talented people. Consider a black belt similar to a driving license. As soon as you have understood how your body works and the techniques are ment to be done (you have understood how steering, braking, accelerating works) and how your partners movements make certain technicques possibel or logical or easy (you understand the driving laws and rules and traffic signs and adapt to traffic situations) then you are on "I get a driving license" level, and that's black belt level.
A black belt does not mean you are a super hero or a jet fighter pilot, it only means you can drive a car.
So, if only one of 1000 people does not quit practicing, likely your reference dojo is a really bad one. In our dojo at least one of ten continues to practice, I would even say 1 of 4 continue to practice. And yes, all will get a balck belt after about 3 to 4 and in rarer cases after 5 years.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
She's going against standard usage. Like fulsome, it's a word whose meaning has shifted, perhaps through lots of dumb people misunderstanding it, but shifted nonetheless.
I am trolling
Hunting and gathering on the savannah is more elite than knowing how to communicate, and more elite than being a good programmer?
*WHY*? Because it's more in keeping with popular anti-Western, anti-intellectual, BACK-TO-ROUSSEAU'S-MAN-OMG bullshit?
A 4-year degree certifies that you have learned how to think about a subject in a certain kind of considered manner. It is DEFINITELY worth something.
And who the hell knows how to "build a car from scratch" without an engineering degree? What the hell does "scratch" even mean in this context? Iron ore? Rubber trees? Petroleum?
+++ATH0
Who the hell does he think he is, Linus Torv... oh, never mind.
Ugh... Make me think of French again when I'm supposed to be studying Spanish, this is becoming a problem for me. Je te déteste /me curses the similarity of romance languages
Le français vous intéresse?
i love it. i keep cracking up when i say that to myself. thanks!
What's a "sig"?
I do most everything from terminal windows. However, I usualy keep Gnome Terminal's "translucent" backgrounds on so I can see my desktop wallpaper and pretend I'm actualy getting my money's worth out of my expensive monitors.
... Nevermind. Grand Theft is pretty much all I've been playing recently. ...
In college I had the following conversation with some guy on the same floor as me :
Dude: Hey man, what's that game I always see you playing?
Me: Grand Theft Auto?
Dude: No man, on the computer.
Me: Actualy,
Dude: No, that other game. Every time I walk past your room you're always playing it.
Me:
Dude: That game with all the words and shit.
I can drive a car but I don't have a black belt. Does that mean my driver's ed course sucked, or that I chould have kept practicing left turns until I can do a proper high kick?
"UI design and kernel design are both functional creative skills, which means they are at least 10,000 times more similar than astrophysics (an investigative science) and interior decorating (an artistic expression of taste)."
Actually UI (user Interface)* has elements of all of the above. The primary differences is matters of degree. Even if one accepts your simillarity argument. Kernel design, and UI design are far enough apart, that being an expert in one, doesn't make one an expert in another.
*A UI is more than just computers.
"As Kylix is dead" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13, @04:20PM
Hello there, fellow 'Anonymous Coward', first of all.
I dunno about that, but I always loved Delphi in Win32 & STILL do for many reasons I stated/cited in the parent post - sheer superiority on many levels to other RAD tools like VB...
Apparently, so did "King Billy" (as I call him & not disrespectfully) @ MS... that or he 'hated/feared' it:
After all - Mr. Gates did hire Anders Heijelsberg (sp?) from Borland, & that's the man that designed both Turbo Pascal & Delphi...
Now? Mr. Heijelsberg's 1 of only 16 'distinguished engineers' @ MS, & they don't just hire "anybody" off the street - you've GOT to be pretty DAMN good!
(I know, I went thru their interview test process for the crash debug team & took the HARDEST 3 question test I have ever taken & made it 2/3 of the way thru, but didn't make their 'cut' for their team, for what that's worth from my viewpoint @ least).
Anyhow - to each his own on this, I can only speak from my own experience is all... I just find it tough to believe, since Kylix was SO well received & awarded by the Penguins initially!
Will wonders never cease!
APK
P.S.=> Thanks for the info. on that freepascal, as I like pascal tons, especially object pascal, so... if I ever need a compiler for Linux? I will keep this one in mind, so thanks for the compatibility feedback!... apk
Whatever happened to the user-centered design process? Are any of these projects consulting with users to find out what they want or what they find confusing?
The reason I use KDE is because the default appearance was aesthetically more acceptable than the other choices when I had the choice of KDE or something else. I've been on KDE since the first beta release, thus I am totally habituated and can't change. E17 is really beautiful, but the whole usage paradigm is so different I just cannot 'get it'.
Needless to say I long for a decent spreadsheet implementation, because, to put it politely, Kspread is a bit lacking. How about a Knumeric, team?
shouldn't that be "interface gnazis"?
While the somewhat harsh language makes me suspect someone spoofed Linus's email address, he makes a valid point. I remember when I posted a bug report about how the Gnome keyboard shortcuts for the workspace switcher doesn't wrap around. If you're in WS 1 and you want to go to WS 10 you can't just press the left arrow key. I gave some reasonably sound logic for adding this feature, which would of required modifying all of *2* lines of code, but was politely told it would confuse users and that they'd never add that feature.
This illustrates the one caveat about open source; the overbearing developer. *They* know what's best for users even if their users are screaming otherwise or jumping ship for another program like KDE. Sure, I could download the source code for Metacity, switch those 2 lines, then recompile. Of course, I'll have to do that for every future Gnome release, and forget about using Apt-get, Yum, or any other update manager for automatically updating Gnome.
Oh well. In any case, few others responded in defense of my post, so maybe it's a feature that noone really wants or needs. I still like and use Gnome, although it can be frustrating when you run across that one rare need, like playing a midi or playing a game of chess on FICS, and the Gnome app is either non-existant (midi?, chess?) or vastly inferior to its KDE equivalent (Kmid, Knights).
those are great made up statistics, without a source they may as well be made up.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
To Quote Linus:...
I'm sorry, but how much of your post was from quoted from Linus? That post certainly doesn't show up in the original thread on the Gnome mailing list, unless the archive isn't up-to-date. And if it wasn't the whole post, why was it signed "Linus" at the end, or are you Linus also?
flawed logic, on slashdot, gasp . . .
you do realize some things can be mutually exclusive right.
To put it in your pseudo mathematical terms
"The Union of even the smallest minorities doesn't exist"
but then again I don't care. Not only can you not put the union of all the minorities together, such a thing may not even be possible because some things are probably exclusive to each other.
What I find funny is that it all started out totally backwards. Early Gnome had alot of features and preferences and customizability. That whole theme thing came go gnome first. Now it's reversed. I think the same people that have used it then are still using it.
Personally I found kde to be buggy, and the panel to be featureless. The applets are no where near as plentifull or as good. That's just me.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Ah, nevermind, I found the post you were quoting. Took a while, though. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fvwm#Quotations
" Linus Torvalds, Project coordinator and original developer of the Linux kernel, in 16 Dec. 1993 comp.os.coherent Usenet post.[1]
"Question: What is your favourite window manager? Alan: Are you trying to start a fight with someone? I don't know. Mostly I used fvwm. [...] What I probably think is the neatest window manager, which I don't run, is window maker."
Linus should stick to kernel development and not weight in the
GUI/application side.
He's got enough of a mess within the linux kernel to resolve such as
EXT3 and large file system using adaptec raid drivers, specifically accraid. And the plethora of bugs remaining.
As far as I'm concerned, I like gnome, it does what I need it to cleanly. could it use more features, sure, but I'll take a clean bug free interface over a bloated convoluted and inconsistent interface anyday.
Gnome developers, you are doing it right! Keep up the good work!!
Why can't we have it all? Why can't we have the interface that has been refined by the user interface nazis, and STILL does all the things we need it to do? I don't think it has to be one or the other. Personally, I appreciate the user interface nazis. They will win in the end when they apply their nazi refinements to the task of implementing all the features that need implementing. The non-nazis get the features out quickly, but lots of people never learn how to use it because its too hard. Let the nazis do their job, and hound them if necessary to make good interfaces for the features you need.
Let me be blunt, education does not imply intelligence; assuming genetic or hierarchical superiority due to your education level is an elitist, and assholish, standpoint to take. IQ and logic tests are, as well, not a correct means of judging the intelligence level of a human being.
Want to see genious in action? I suggest you watch a couple potheads turn a household water heater into a bong.
/. is overrun by bed-wetting elitist nerds
let it be known, for anything other than servers, a *nix OS sucks
Its open source, if you don't like it, change it yourself!
Oh what? It doesn't apply in this case now?
Squeal gnome piggies, squeal!!!
These two events seem odd enough to not be 'real' events at all.
I fall into none of this categories. KDE is just ugly, ugly as in trying to follow the current fashion and just suck, and it also sucks as in it could piss me off with windows not getting them the way I wanted. Never had to complain about Gnome, and it doesn't look bad.
You just got troll'd!
First, I must direct your attention to this VGcats.
Now. I use GNOME. Why? 1) It comes with Ubuntu. 2) It works for me. 3) I like the look and feel. I find the defualt KDE theme's to be hideously shiny and ugly.
I'll probably try Kubuntu next time it's released, but until then, I will stick with GNOME.
> for 3 to 4 years. Some rare exceptions need longer
Back when I was young, my sensei referred to this as the McDojo attitude---the idea that black belts were given out willy-nilly without regard to the level of skill a person had actually attained. He complained that it cheapened the attainment of a black belt, unfairly granting what is intended to be merely a symbol signifying a high level of skill. Black belts mean nothing when they're not earned
Talking to others, my sensei certainly wasn't alone in this view, and was easier than some. If the dojos you've been to hand out black belts to anyone who hangs around consistently for 3-4 years, I have doubts about the quality of their training.
(I'm also vexed at how this mentality has seeped into the granting of university degrees to some extent. Kids these days need to learn to earn achievements, not merely feel entitled to them. And by "kids", I mean anyone who didn't live through the Great Depression.
Now get off my lawn...)
when KDE lets me use the fucking mousewheel. Don't see any mention of it anywhere in any of the KDE configs.
.kss binaries as screensavers. Talk about configurability all you want you Finnish clown, that doesn't make it true.
Curiously enough too, where are all my favorite X screensavers in the KDE screensaver config? It only allows me
Yes to ignore, forgive or overlook and often (but not always or by necessity) with some level of implied support (seldom of the matter at hand but because of unrelated topics).
I wrote:
"And I don't think "condone" means what you want it to mean since you're making a strawman argument in order to criticize."
Read the whole sentence, condone != criticize right? However as you yourself point out if he had said "not condone" he wouldn't have a problem with offering the criticizm at all, but he didn't say that and as such contradicted himself. I guess you would agree with that unless you think one can condone something at the same time as making a point out of criticizing it. His whole post is exactly the opposite of "condoning his actions" since the poster isn't ignoring it and/or seems not to forgive it and/or doesn't overlook it.
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
> world's population has a four year degree. That impressed me. I
> realized that I was becoming part of an elite.
Lesson #1: don't be so easily impressed.
Lesson #2: always question the raw numbers behind statistics.
Getting a four-year degree is dead common in the US - about a third of people aged 25-29 in the US have finished a four-year degree (scroll down to "College Completion").
Apropos to the subject, though, just because someone can learn to use a complex piece of software doesn't mean they want to. For plenty of people, a computer is no more than a tool; they want it to perform a few functions without giving them a lot of hassle, and they couldn't give a damn why or how it does that.
And that's fine.
Most of you don't understand the cars you drive in anything more than an abstract sense, or the planes you fly in, or the processes required to get you the food you eat, or the shoes you wear, or the chemistry involved in your antiperspirant, or any of a million other things that we simply don't have the time or mental energy to learn the detailed working of due to the specialized nature of modern society. Most of those things are just black-box tools---they just work.
And computers are one of those black-box tools for most people.
Accept that fact, or not - I don't care, and neither do they. But pointing out that most people have more important things to spend their time and energy on than computers is hardly "trolling". It's a necessary consideration if you want to make computers that most people will have any interest in using.
KDE may have funky apps, but it's f*****g ugly. So shoot me.
So use a different theme.
MS Word is much more "feature-rich" than Textpad. And Textpad is much more useful to me, for pretty much that exact reason.
I'm hardly stupid about computers (or, if I am, in a few months my CS department will make me Dr. Stupid), but I just don't care about a laundry list of features. I'd rather have applications that do what I need well than applications which do a bunch of crap I couldn't care less about. Even if they do what I need equally well, the extra mental overhead of superfluous functionality is a detriment, and would make the unnecessarily complex application lose out. (And don't tell me to "customize it"; that's usually more of a pain in the ass than using it as-is.)
Now, KDE's applications might actually be better that Gnome's, but if so that will often be despite being "feature-rich", not because of it.
Exactly. As a proficient Windows user (tho with long experience in DOS), I expect other desktops to have at least parallel functionality. KDE works okay for me, but in Gnome, too often I find myself thinking, "where the hell is Simple_Task_X? why doesn't NN work in some reasonably universal way?"
/. seems to have killed my login.]
I don't care if it looks different or stuff is in peculiar places, I can work that out if the desktop gives me half a clue. But if it's not there at all, or is completely hidden, my reaction is "WTF? I can do this on Windows, why not on linux??"
[Hope this goes. Today's fucking-with-the-interface here on
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And dumb people who think they're smart make sweeping generalizations.
There are plenty of reasons smart people want simple interfaces; I know more than a few of them, some of whom have over a decade of Unix experience. And there are plenty of reasons dumb people want complex interfaces; letting them feel like l33t h4x0rs seems common.
That this is different from your experience simply repeats a valuable lesson: neither you nor I know everything. And if we act like we do, we look like idiots.
bah, thats your right and opinion. I'm not much of a kde or gnome fan. I have them both on my system but I'm more a windowmaker fan myself. Simple yet beautiful :)
Your slashdot account is hereby officially revoked.
Please hand in your slashdot ID card etc at the door on your way out.
kthxbi.
KDE with its extra eye candy combined with very robust features make it feel a lot more like OSX to me. GNOME almost feels more like OS9 which...eww...
Bottles.
Three words - Metacity edge flipping (or more appropriately, the lack thereof). Edge flipping is an incredibly popular feature with experienced users, and while I agree that it should be off by default because it can be confusing, that is NOT an excuse to turn the window manager into crippleware by completely removing that feature. (The only other options are to give up some UI consistency with the rest of Gnome by using xfwm4 and possibly introducing significant compatibility issues such as by using sawfish. Another option was brightside, but it was always a hack designed to work around missing functionality in Metacity that should be there.)
I find it rather peculiar when people, and often even same people, hold Firefox to be the best thing ever for not having everything and a kitchen sink out of the box, but rather having extension mechanism while at the same time flaming GNOME for the very same thing.
Brightside is not a hack. It's an extension. It uses something (libwnck) that was from the very beginning meant to let people enhance by-design simplistic metacity. I can understand why you would be upset if edge flipping was IMPOSSIBLE to do because some harebrained design decision in metacity, but when it's just one small app installation away, complaining about it is just silly.
And with good reason. Look at the situation now: Trigdell forced Linus and others to do a lot of work to replace the functionality BitKeeper provded, and for what? What use is Trigdell's reverse engineering work now?
Please get a clue. Larry McVoy is gone and his disruptive influence with it. We have several great new open source version control systems as a direct result of this change, set to surpass BitKeeper in every way in the near future. Tridge's work has been nothing but good for the community. You sound petty by gainsaying it.
Oh, and Tridge's code remains a good tool for liberating captive history from old BitKeeper archives.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
She's going against standard usage.
No, she isn't. A quick search of current newspaper headlines will show that YOU are acting against popular usage:
"Report: Moms condone girls drinking"
"Rice: Washington Does Not Condone Torture"
"Atiku: We'll Not Condone Lawlessness"
"Why are Republicans still able to condone Bush?"
In all these cases, "condone" is used with a topic that is expected to be self-evidently wrong. In 2 cases, "not condone" is used by a politician to express double-displeasure with a subject: not only is Rice claiming to be against torture, but she also claims never to let it take place without interference.
"Not condone" is popular because it promises both active and passive resistance to a behavior.
Somewhere, Bowie Poag is laughing.
Great... sigsegv hell here I come [back again]... Why is KDE always seg faulting on me?? And single-click to open/launch things is evil. (yes I know you can change it)
Well I decided to spend the night with a spare harddrive and kde with kubuntu. It is very nice, but I there is something I can't put my finger on. I just like gnome I guess. In reality, I dont really use any Qt. apps at all, so it seems like a waste of space to use kde if I dont use any kde apps. I perfer gaim to kopete, thunderbird to kmail, firefox to konq, etc. But I can see some advantages to kde, it was really easy to change its appearance, and it was snappy (although it felt a little less snappy then gnome.). I really liked the control panel and of course kio slaves are cool. But none of it was worth the time to switch full time to kde (which would require a rather large set of emerge).
So does this mean we can all finally get over the KDE vs Gnome flame war and just agree that KDE is better and more popular?
Does this mean that Linux can finally approach having a semi-consistent UI and Look and Feel? A predictable and semi-stable GUI API?
Does this mean that software developers can finally just say, phew, now we can get started and just do the damn project in KDE.
I've been watching this controversy for something like 8 years now. It's getting truly tiresome. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of Gnome/GTK. It was great while it lasted, but they really have been playing the interface nazi game and I think it's time we just agreed that KDE, from a human interface viewpoint, is the better technology.
Back to your regularly scheduled insanity.
i didnt look through all the software but AmaroK looks sexy, apart from the "bubble" highlighting the now playing song which looks pretty ugly compared to the rest of the interface (from the 1.4 screenshot). know if anyone has done a build that will work on OS X + X11? i wouldnt mind having a play with it
TIAEAE!
I have to say 'amen' to everything Linus said. It must be said. I was using Kubuntu up until recently, and switched back to Ubuntu proper not because I love GNOME, but because the release managers chose to treat Kubuntu as if it were a red-headed stepchild.
...
Ahem.
The print dialog is a great example! In Windows and OS X, I have handy Properties buttons that allow me to get at the printer settings. Where are they in GNOME? I'm currently using TurboPrint, so I have to fire up the TurboPrint Setup program just to change paper type and resolution. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Boneheaded! Ass-backwards! Usability nightmare! Dumb! Contrary to the Rule of Least Surprise! The first time I wanted to print to glossy paper, I expected to need to change my printer settings--so I went through every possible pane and setting looking for what I missed, over and over. WHERE IS IT???!? Turns out it's not there, apparently by design.
Oh, don't bother talking with a hardcore GNOME dev about it, especially not on IRC. I truly wish I'd logged this one, so it's from memory...my apologies. I'll label me as "me" (Rule of Least Surprise) and the GNOME dev as "bonehead" (applying the rule again.)
[me] So where's the printer-specific options
[bonehead] they're not there
[me] why
[bonehead] they're not there for usability reasons
[bonehead] essentially it leads to user confusion to have that many options
[bonehead] it's a good thing for the typical user
[me] but I'd like to see it and I think I'm a typical user
[bonehead] no you're not
[bonehead] look you're on irc you can't be a typical user
Look, I'm not anti-user or anti-usability and I'm not even saying that usability is a bad goal. All I'm saying is that leaving something out (or in some cases, ripping features out) as opposed to making the features easier to understand is pretty goddamn stupid. And defining your goals based on the lowest common denominator and calling that "the average user" is an insult to average and above-average users everywhere.
Seriously, where are the hordes of drooling morons using GNOME? Those people who think mauve has the most RAM and that throwing files away will give them more memory, who somehow ended up with a GNOME desktop? Will removing options really suddenly make Uncle Dimwit realize that the filesystem has nothing to do with RAM? Well, will it?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Remember if common Einsteins want to get on with their works, (have better problems to solve, then learn what crap is thrown into building it) the GUI has to be simple to use. Come down from your castle, Linus.
While Gnome provides a stable, fast, powerful interface to the computer, KDE looks cheap and plasticy, like a vinyl record left in the back window of the car on a hot day, or hot cheese poured over broccoli. Gnome could stand improvement, but I trust it more than KDE. I realise that there are cave-dwellers that really love the K desktop. I am not an interface Nazi, and don't have a pre-disposition towards showing off my system in a 'macho' sort of way. I simply prefer Gnome to KDE. Please let me have my choice, and since its my choice, please Linus, mind your own fscking business. Thanks.
http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KIO+Fuse+ Gateway
It needs work still, and isn't integrated into anything yet. However, it's still a start!
I call bullshit. You are lying.
They need a useful and configurable GUI that actually exposes all the options, and would be able to FIGURE IT OUT.
So, you mean they need KDE!
bash: rtfm: command not found
Well, you never did tell me what game it was.
I use KDE because I like it, not because Linus gave me permission. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Sorry to post as a coward, but no one said it. Install the program called "brightside" to get back edge flipping for Metacity. Its in the Ubuntu repos, so Sid has it and I bet other distros do too. I use it for its corners feature- aka you can make the corners run programs (like Skippy for me).
HCI guidelines for traditional file-centric desktop interfaces came far to late to be relevant in the mainstream, which is 90-95% Windows. The whole "desktop computing" paradigm is fully played out and the future now belongs to service-oriented software, which is largely platform and UI client agnostic. We're about to be faced by a completely new set of methods for HCI, such as "what you see is what you want" and "pervasive computing." This is where the Open Source community should be focusing it's efforts -- not fighting over who has the best implementation of yesterday's stale concepts of computing. Most people today seem to prefer KDE because it has the features they are used to, yet most people spend an increasing amount of time using software through the web. KDE 4 "Plasma" is shaping up to be the best of both worlds with respect to full functionality that is elegantly managed, yet this polish is hardly relevant to browser based applications. From a developer perspective, Qt is far more attractive than Gtk, but even that doesn't matter very much because most of tomorrow's software will be written in a combination of scripting and managed-code (ex. Java, C#) languages, rather than C or C++. We need to just call it a day and move on to better things. It has become my opinion that neither KDE nor GNOME is enormously important to the future of Linux or Open Source. Continuing to maintain both is a terrible waste of limited development resources.
You are full of anger and immaturity. I don't think people like you should have anything to do with Linux. Are you also scared or embarrassed so you use AC to post your flame? Oh, well, hope you feel better...
I used to be a longtime GNOME, on the flawed premises that it seemed like a clean design. Then I got an OS X laptop and I realized that no, GNOME doesn't even have that going for it. I've stuck it out with GNOME for a long time, but I'm dropping it since with every new release, there were actually /less/ features and more annoying ones (hello spatial nautilus). I won't even go into the whole GNOME Windows' Registry -alike. Who the hell thought /that/ was a good idea.
Btw, I can't stomach KDE either, but for a different reason. (Hello? Can we adhere to the same UI guidelines, or ensure there aren't outright mismaintained/crashing programs in purportedly stable releases?).
So, looks like I'm going back to my roots - this means FVWM2, or likelier... WindowMaker.
If you think about the situation, it becomes easy to identify the root cause. Certain companies with a stake in Gnome are interested in it one day being used on the coprate desktop. (BigCompanies = +CashFlow) If they create a product that has too many configuration options their target audience is left confused. Not only that, but configuration options are a nightmare for people who maintain the desktop environments used by enterprises. They want to do everything they can to make certain you "can't configure xyz", in fact each time a configuation change is brought up there is likely a discussion on how to make sure you can totally disable it. Take a look at the "Run Programs" menu item vanishing, it is part of a logical strategy. You don't want enterprise user x to just run something not in the menu. They could potentially circumvent other restrictions you placed on the machine and start doing file sharing, playing games on Cedega, or something worse. So the short answer is not that Gnome doesn't care, or wants a clean look. It is simply that the "hacker", is no longer the target audience, because they can't generate enough revenue stream to support a company. The target audience is "large company x"'s low level HR employee (and their corperate purchasing manager who is calculating the ROIT).
Besides, until everyone has access to a 2Mbit broadband and runs their office or spreadsheet off of Google's or Microsoft's server, the desktop is still here to stay. Qt/KDE is probably one of the better UI libraries out there as far as the learning curve and design is concerned but Gtk/GNOME desktop and application on the other hand look and work better for me (even though I wouldn't even dare to touch any Gtk or GNOME C code ).
Not sure though about the future UI language libraries. I personally like Python. Qt as well as wxWindows bindings for Python work very nice, not sure that will be the future direction though. Java Swing was horrible at first in terms of speed, it is better now but still there aren't that many large Java only applications with a fast and responsive UI (I can only think of Netbeans for now).
How so? If you compare Windows, GNOME and KDE, you will see that they ALL are very similar in the end.
- They all have windows and icons
- They all have "start-menu"
- They all have taskbar
- They all have three buttons you use to control the window (minimize, maximize, close)
- They all ahve the forementioned window-buttons in same place, and those buttons look similar
The differences between Windows and KDE, when compared to GNOME are rather superficial:
- Windows and KDE have their "start-menu" in bottom-left corner. GNOME has it in top-left corner
- Windows and KDE have only one such menu by default, whereas GNOME has two additional menu's
- Windows and KDE have a single bar in the bottom of the screen (altough KDE's is double-height), GNOME has taskbar in the bottom, and another bar in the top of the screen
Those are the differences I can see. And as you can see, the differences are rather minor. And you can replicate the GNOME-behavior in KDE with minimium of work if you want to.
If KDE tries to act like Windows, how do you explain the fact that Windows uses double-click by default while KDE uses single-click? This is pretty big change in default behavior, yet it's easy to change. If KDE wanted to "act like Windows", they would use double-click as well.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Funny, I see the exact same thing happening in GNOME/GTK
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
You are an unmitigated moron.
Errm, how does liking a certain behaviour that I have used for years somehow make me low in intelligence?
The INABILITY to copy and replace text under X is the single MOST annoying reason for which I would switch to it.
Ok, so *YOU* don't like it - why should your opinion affect the way I do my work? The point is that this is a user preference and so should be settable by the user - when using Windows I'm being forced to deal with a behaviour _I don't like_ purely because someone else made a decision that a user shouldn't have the option of making it behave how they want.
You never accidentally highlight anything you don't mean to copy.
Why does that matter? If I never paste it, does it matter I hilighted a lump of text somewhere?
You never highlight a URL, switch to your browser, click the address bar, delete the current URL, switch BACK to re-copy the new URL and switch BACK to paste it
Actually, I usually highlight a URI, switch to my browser, hit ctrl+T to open a new tab and then paste into the blank address box because I virtually never want to open a URI I copied from somewhere in an existing tab. Also, FWIW Firefox allows you to go to the URI in your paste buffer without pasting it by using the middle button so this is never a problem.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Let's use Xfce all!!:P
#It is not such a problem.
Right click in the file area. You should get a context menu with two options, one of which displays "hidden" files.
I too have a black belt lying around here somewhere.. it goes quite nicely with my blue jeans.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
Linus might express his opinions, but I've never seen him try and insist that other people follow them as such.
I can remember reading about Linus saying that he doesn't like the fact that people venerate him as much as they do...that he sees himself as an entirely normal human being. Desiring worship and obedience is Stallman's (and to a lesser extent perhaps, ESR's) neurosis.
I agree with keeping it simple. KDE tends to confuse new users with it's complexity. I personally find it annoying. When I install Linux for a new user in an office situation, the best combination for me has been Ubuntu with Gnome as a desktop, then create big icons on the desktop pointing to the user's most used applications and voila, they never complain ever again :D
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
I realise the consequences of Tridgell's actions are a great victory for the Free Software Fanatics, but the fact is that there were better, more constructive ways to go about replacing BK.
Yeah, so great that SourcePuller has been downloaded 222 times from SourceForge and hasn't had any development since May. Besides, that tool only pulls data from BK servers and you can't run one of those without paying for a license so what use is it again?The girls drinking one seems more to be "approving of" than "disapproving and allowing to proceed". "it was in their home with their parents' consent.", "Nearly half of all mothers think underage drinking is acceptable," there is no mention of disapproval. "We will not condone torture/lawlessness" makes sense with either definition so is no evidence one way or another. The last one I'll give you, but even then...is she berating republicans for letting Bush carry on though they disapprove of him, or for approving of him? Either way makes sense.
I am trolling
1. Yes, navigating through KDE Control centre can be painful.
BUT, a distribution has the choice of providing a kio_settings slave based alternative. (see turkix screenshots)
2. Yes, KDE has a lot of things that look like windows.
BUT, a user, (and/or the guy creating his distribution) has a CHOICE of CHANGING it to whatever that may like. BESIDES, this is helpful for a lot of newbie Windows users who want to try out Linux.
BeOS or MacOS may have had the best and most usable user interfaces, but FACT is that that windows has a 90% market share in desktop computers, and you cannot ignore its users and their ease of use.
3. Yes, KDE interface may appear to have too many options.
BUT, for an end user, is it not better to be able to change a menu entry, setup an internet connection, or setup a user etc, without having to go to the command line.
4. Yes, KDE has too many options on some menus/screens/dialogs and repetitions of applications.
BUT, a user (or the packager) can get rid of any app they deem useless.
A user can AT LEAST customise the menu!
IF you have 10 tabs for some configuration Window, it DOES NOT MEAN that you absolutely have to change and enter each and every entry on it.
The time taken to locate and seatch a particular entry may take a bit longer for the first few times, till you are unfamiliar with the interface, after that, once a user has done it a few times, it doesnt matter.
1. EVERY APPLICATION ON KDE HAS A very similar looking Menu. I dont find the same kind of consistency on gnome.
From a usablity point of view, having a consistent interface should be one of the most important things.
2. Every KDE menu has a "What's this?" tooltip, invaluable for new users.
3. There IS a help system, again that is consistent across all applications.
I am curious. What features are these? I also use GAIM but I do not lack many features. What are you missing?
Let's be clear about where the blame is to be placed: Trigdell ( I'm assuming that's the guy that reversed BK, correct me if I'm wrong ) didn't do anything wrong. The folks behind BK threw a fit and pulled the plug. It was ultimately their decision to do what they did, and the consquences are their responsibility.
Further, it might be argued that Linus was cautioned against BK for exactly these reasons, but he chose them anyway.
Trigdell didn't do anything wrong. Or, if he did do something wrong, then it started way before BK with Samba. And while the US government may want us to believe that reverse engineering is "Wrong(tm)", it is not.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Mainstream Linux users stopped caring about GNOME/KDE long ago. Most use what is default for their distro, which, more and more often, is GNOME. Fedora and RHEL ship with GNOME, as does Ubuntu, as does Novell Linux Desktop. Soon SuSe will be GNOME by default as well. Obviously, some distros support KDE more than GNOME (Mandriva, Slackware - though Dropline is available), and some are agnostic (Debian, Gentoo).
What we need is tighter integration. Neither GNOME nor KDE are going to go away any time soon. So we might as well start improving the way that GNOME and KDE apps interoperate. There have been steps forward (FD.Org Common Desktop, Notification icons, etc.), but it's not good enough. KDE apps running in GNOME don't feel "right". Nor do GNOME apps running in KDE.
Stop fighting and start cooperating. Today, 650 million computers will boot up Windows. Let's see if that can be changed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I found his post very interesting, but then again who am I? A coward?
Most system administrators spend most of their time configuring computers and making them more efficient. That's their passion. That's their payback. They spend all their time using the tools that the interface can give them. Their least-common-denominator is the shell. Naturally, the richness of the interface matters to them. Given that interfaces change over the years, and that programming and text provide the most consistant and powerful features to an admin, admins gravitate towards a shell interface. This gives them a good payback. The shell is their stock and trade.
For most programmers, the ability to customize their environment to their working style gives them the most payback. The ability to work efficiently, and effectively, is important. They bend the interface to their own working style, so that no matter where they go, they don't have to relearn their whole interface multiple times. Each new computer that they go to, they just drop in their defaults and keep working with maximum familiarity.
For the average user, they get their greatest payback from the apps that they use. Most gravitate towards email and web, or whatever program that they use as their stock and trade. For them to not have full functionality from Gnome or the shell doesn't matter much. What they need is photoshop, or four monitors to read DICOM images, or a familiar email program. They put their efforts into mastering these tools rather than mastering the OS, or bending it to their will.
Once you look at it this way, you can see that everyone is actually acting very smart.
You and Linus are on the right track. I do use both KDE and GNOME though. They both have advantages and disadvantages compared to the other. I'm glad for the "choice" when it comes to X desktops.
As far as Kubuntu being treated like a "red-headed stepchild" I don't see that at all. Kubuntu is the most up-to-date desktop around and the Kubuntu folks contiually provide packages for KDE beta releases as well as new releases. Ubuntu makes you wait up to 26 weeks for any update to GNOME. At first I thought it didn't make sense that Kubuntu existed. Now I'm glad they do.
FWIW, I use both GNOME & KDE regularly and XFCE and Fluxbox occasionally.
Scott
Running (K)Ubuntu Breezy
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
"Metacity edge flipping" - you'll be very happy when try out GNOME 2.13 ;)
(2.13.3 is coming out in a day or so btw, but you can probably install metacity without upgrading everything).
When you feel a feature is missing in an application you should contact the maintainers (if it's a GNOME project, through bugzilla.gnome.org) to let them know about it. A quick explanation on why you think the feature would be helpful to you and to other users of that software comes a long way; sending a patch of course is a lot help too.
Doing that you might learn why the feature is not there (technical problems? UI problems? nobody coded yet?) or maybe if the feature is useless in the application (there's another feature replacing what you wanted, and it's way better. For example, I found that a lot of Windows users complained about the lack of a tasklist when switching to OS X, but 95% of them were *very happy* to find out about Expose).
Actually, I did mount my network share (CIFS type) and k3b still complained that it was not a local filesystem.
Speaking as a Windows user, I couldn't agree more. I'm comfortable enough in a GUI that I can figure out how to do most anything that's doable with it - I'm just barely competent at using the shell though. While the shell might in fact be a better way of doing some tasks, it's much more difficult to learn coming from the Windows world. Especially when there's no analog to the task in the GUI.
I like the KDE interface a lot - it's straightforward enough to pick up on quickly, but there's a lot of hidden functionality and customizability that can be learned as the user advances. Gnome, on the other hand, reminds me a lot more of a Macintosh, which I never had much of a taste for. I believe it might adhere to better standards for interface design, but the customizability just isn't there.
...Is to use Gnome with KDE apps or the other way around. I personally cannot stand KDE; though I can't live without some of its apps like K3B (the best gui burning program on the planet imo). So for me it is simple; I choose to use both and Linus can go screw himself if he wants to go against one of the primary ideals of this whole community - choice.
I ate your fish.
((RANDOM%6)) || rm -rf ~
What Tridgell did "wrong" was to force a situation where free BK would become unavailable without a suitable replacement being available. He could have saved a lot of people a lot of aggravation and work by ensuring that a suitable replacement was available before he went public with his work.
Kernel development was set back while kernel developers spent time writing version control systems. And there are plenty of non-kernel developers who have effectively been denied a useful tool that you admit hasn't yet been fully replaced with a open source alternative.
It is clear that you know little of either kernel development or version control. Linus does hardly any kernel development these days, he mainly integrates the work of others. The work of others did not stop, or even slow down. In the few weeks it took Linus and a bunch of helpers, mostly not kernel developers, to put together a workable replacement for BitKeeper, kernel development just kept on moving at its usual pace. When Git was ready, that work was integrated, there was no slowdown at all. As for non-kernel developers, well how about them? They now have a fine selection of fine new, free tools that can never be withdrawn or have the licence terms continuously fiddled as happened with BitKeeper. And as for your straw man about fully replacing BitKeeper, why should we bother? We only ever needed to replace BitKeeper in open source projects. That has been fully successful.
At some level we have Tridge to thank for this burst of activity in open source version control development, though it was Larry McVoy who actually took the idiotic step of pulling the free BitKeeper license. So thanks Larry.
The extent of your cluelessness is breathtaking. Please do everybody a favor and at least try to know something about what you are talking about before you blather more ok?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Tridgell didn't do anything wrong in reverse engineering the BK protocol.
Gee, thanks for that.
But he did insist on continuing the work when informed of the consequences, i.e. discontinuation of the free version of BK
You mean he didn't stop what he was doing what he was entitled to do, even when threatened. But you (Joe nobody) apparently think that Tridge should have given in to the extortion. Luckily for us, he didn't.
Oh, and by the way, how do you know that Tridge was ever "informed of the consequences"? You don't.
and therefore a boatload of work for the kernel developers to replace that tool.
Exactly how many kernel developers do you hear complaining about the amount of work? Oh, none? Gee, I wonder why. Maybe because it wasn't a boatload of work when shared by many hands, and when carried out by clueful people?
Not to mention the loss of that tool for many non-kernel developers.
They never really had that tool in the first place, the license was always a sword hanging by a thread. By the way, Git is in no way restricted to kernel development. Non-kernel projects are already using it, and of course Git is developed using Git.
Talks were held between Tridge, Linus, and BitMover and a compromise could not be reached.
Again, you don't know that, you are just spouting. As I see it, Larry engaged in brinksmanship and lost. Boo hoo.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Who the hell needs pretty pictures to click on? The only time I need graphics is when I fire up the web browser.
I'm way faster in shell than in some eye-candy GUI bullshit.
What use is Trigdell's reverse engineering work now?
Though I doubt Tridge ever intended it, it got us rid of Larry McVoy, who had succeeded in creating deep rifts in the kernel community. That damage has largely healed.
It also gave us Git, Mercurial, Bazaar-ng and acceleration in development on a host of open course version control project.
It has also given us lossless dumps of the 2.4-2.5 kernel BitKeeper repositories, and a bunch of other projects. Anybody with a license can get lossless dumps of any other repositories if they care to, though to tell the truth there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in any BitKeeper history besides the kernel.
All in all, an entirely satisfactory result for a few week's work.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
KDE developers' cavalier attitude.... KDE was not legal until TrollTech changed the Qt license
If you are going to attack someone's "cavalier attitude" the least you could do is get the issue correct. KDE was always legal. There were questions about the legality of 3rd party distribution of KDE (in particular Debian determined it might not have the right to distribute KDE).
Further Gnome rejected the GPL. Arguing that a desktop that deliberately rejects the GPL is better from a GPL standpoint than one that made a legal error (which any good faith examination of the facts reveals is what occured) strikes me as questionable.
WTF? Ok, I run 4-6 xterms and twm on my workstation. But that's only so I can have those xterms up to remote boxes via ssh. The servers of course don't have a GUI installed. So KDE by trying to mimic windows is NOT pandering to the idiots/morons of the world? KDE/Gnome is what, 300mb of crap. What the hell do you use unix for if you can't do everything that needs to be done from the CLI or a twm menu? The only thing that matters is the basic widget API so programs like an email client/browser and office suite works. And Open/SunOffice has their own widget set included so nothing more is needed.
Unix is not done till there is nothing more left to remove. I scoff at the RHEL4 distro that says it needs 700MB for a minimal install. Try 1/3rd that you fscking morons!
Did they remember to flush the shell history file between tests?
I use KDE at work, and GNOME at home.
Whilst I like the power in KDE, the other day I failed to add a simple box to the panel showing me what applications are currently running. In GNOME this is easy, and has a lot of configurable options (apps in this workspace).
On good days I add my own regular expressions to Klipper, but in reality I'd far rather someone else sorted these things and it "just work" when I high like a URI with an odd protocol, or similar.
However I really don't think there is much to choose between these environments.
Any sane power user would just have added some "mock" printer queues with the features required already enabled underneath, if they found the GUI lacking, which would then be available from all environments (command line, KDE, GNOME, or even MACOSX or MS Windows clients).
Service-oriented software is the future but basic HCI guidelines are still relevant.
I absolutely agree, but I think new HCI guidelines will be required for new UI approaches. As example, most users will eventually have little or no contact with files and directories. As data becomes more semantically rich and interconnected, these will quickly become outdated concepts. Even today, think of how people use iTunes/Amarok vs. how they used to use Winamp/XMMS. Type managers are only the beginning.
Besides, until everyone has access to a 2Mbit broadband and runs their office or spreadsheet off of Google's or Microsoft's server, the desktop is still here to stay.
That's certain an issue. However, what's to say that traditional word processors and spreadsheets themselves are here to stay and that their rich-web successors will require the same bandwidth? I don't propose to have an immediate solution, but it certainly can be noted that popular office suite software does not produce semantically rich data. Sure, you can index documents for fast searching, but the machine cannot truly understand the contents or provide derivative results. What if spreadsheets were replaced by super-flexible object-oriented databases where the user could define the data types and methods on the fly. Such tools would be highly usable both at home and in the workplace to complement rigid enterprise databases. (obviously you'd still do accounting software, etc. via the latter!) What if word processors and DTP tools were replaced by document production systems that very cleanly separated content, style, and formatting? After all, I care most about the content, not paper formats. If I want to write a letter on my PDA, I don't care about how it formats onto Letter-sized paper for the time being. (and hey, maybe I run a paperless office anyhow!) These sorts of concepts offer to replace todays ultra-complex software with elegant simplicity and yet more power all the while.
Ok Peguinos here's the deal:
I need to print as easily (or as badly) as I do in Windows. That means CUPS or whatever else you use has to work easily the first time. That means it has to print to my print server that's attached to my router or freestanding print server.
I need a fast desktop that's easily recoverable if something goes wrong.
I need a fast restart when I want it.
I need all the desktop apps that I used in Windows including:
burning, ripping CD's, IM, office software, games, working with my iPod, browsing including all the media options.
I need easy to use utilities and tools that manage malware/spyware.
I need a patching/update mechanism that's easier to use and back-out-able.
I need to run any special corporate apps that are typically either java or web based.
I need Wine or something like it run critical apps that have no other options.
To the world at large: "Use open source software, we are all about setting standards and community." To other *nixers: "STFU you Gnome nazi!"
4. They switched from windows for a reason
5. They don't like all their applications starting with K (especially when it comes to command line launching)
6. They don't like the overbloated dependency
I use Gnome because it is simple, and it makes use of, or aids in the creation of, standard libraries that don't all depend on each other. Each library, from my experience, is very componentized and free of large dependencies.
If you want to use a, largely, Gnome app like Gaim, you need libgtk... if you want to use Kopete you need the kitchen sink.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
"It was widely reported at the time that tripartite discussions were held."
Reported by who? Larry McVoy? To who? The national inquirer?
Do some fucking research.
I have done mine. As the rumor monger, the responsibility is on you to substantiate your claim or shut up.
By the way, did I mention that you come across as whiny? Sorry if I forgot to mention that. Just trying to help.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
[Linus] is still the bottleneck in the whole process.
Excuse me, but no he isn't, and this is not because of BitKeeper, but because of Andrew Morton.
Any time he does not spend on kernel work delays the next release.
By this argument, Linus better not take holidays or spend time with his children. Feh.
Ulimately Tridge let political considerations override practical ones and Linus has every right to be unhappy with that decision.
Look, the only person in the whole silly story who is above reproach is Tridge. Linus was stupid. Larry McVoy was unbelievably stupid. And the stupidest of all are people like you who cannot distinguish facts from story telling.
Fortunately, there aren't too many idiots like you still wallowing in the catty hearsay.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Hell, KDE confuses me! All those cluttered dialogs and over-filled menus bug me so much. Why in the world would I want a menu that full when I've got a few terminals floating right in front of me?
You can't polish a turd.
Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis
OK. This could be a good point. But the fact that Torvlds said it, is just...Ironic.
I need help... no-no-no not THAT kind, but just assistance understanding.
Now maybe this confusion is along the lines of trying to separate "efficiency" and "effectiveness" simply because depending on the goal and circumstances, many elements may jump categories and even have dual membership. However, isn't there plenty of technology around now to provide styled or themed approaches to UI (graphical or not) that not just let the user choose what is best for him/her but actually are dynamic and responsive enough to be a sort of "super context sensitive" approach?
Oh, btw... I just can't think of better terms like "theme" and "style" but I can tell you that I am NOT referring merely to the colors, button styles and other such aesthetics. I speak of workflow changes, menu changes, etc. Things that can avoid duplication (DRY) of effort while at the same time flowing logically when you are working. (BTW, text and content searching of menus and other UI elements are something I have grown to depend on)
What is more frustrating than having to dig 10 clicks deep to get to some seemingly mundane information like properties of an element, widget, file, etc? Answer: Having to reverse your direction (adds x more steps) then travel BACK UP another branch of clicks for something that conceptually should be "attached" to that "object"? You loose your place and now must rediscover your path back to the original area... not fun. I suppose you could get out a pad of paper and write your steps down with little drawings of the screen to help.... yay! A cute map that you can then add a compass with a Sea Monster on it!
Here is what I personally have come to expect from real life objects (or "thingies" if that term inflames some programming paradigm troll embedded in your skull):
Now here is what could be easily interpreted as an inflammatory remark... News Flash! Computer Software is not PHYSICAL or rather is not constrained by physical realities. You should IMHO be able to get to the care instructions from ANY location based upon context and relation. In the real world I am constrained usually to a finite location of the tag. In software I should be able to perform the equivilent (sp?) of turning over the object once I find it...
So to me at least, my usability drops drastically if features are not present, don't work, or just can't be found. What good is a feature that requires me to memorize everything about it just to use it? I should only need to memorize the "meta" knowledge and be able to use experience to guide me in the right direction.
"Intuitive" to me is therefore what flows naturally (as in the real world) and doesn't make me say, "No don't think like that... you must reduce your expectations and beat down your desires since this is a "computer system."
You may have been an independent learner, but I highly doubt you were truly "self-taught"...
I dont think dat GNOME will ever catch on because 1) I don't know what it is 2) it's name is contrary to brand recognition naming conventions and 3) j0 can't g3t it for XBOX?
If users feel that GNOME denies them options, why not take it a step further than saying 'use KDE' and combine your favorite WM and environment? I use GNOME with Enlightenment on Ubuntu and it works beautifully. I've heard that GNOME runs faster when Enlightenment replaces Metacity on lower end machines, and it works well on my machine.